Women in Editorial Boards: An Investigation of Female Representation in Top Economic Journals

We study the evolution of female representation in editorial roles for the most important journals in economics from 1960 to 2019. We first document that the share of women in editorial roles has steadily increased over the past six decades. Second, we investigate whether this increase is due to an expansion of the pool of qualified female economists, or due to a change in the preference for appointing women. We find evidence for both using a large database on detailed CVs of more than 37,000 economists. Finally, to understand whether there are gender gaps in the probability of being offered and/or of accepting editorial positions, we administer a large-scale survey among most prominent scholars in economics. We find evidence for the first channel: women are more likely to be offered editorial positions at top-5 and general interest journals, but there are no gender differences in the propensity to accept these offers.