Targeting the Leaky Pipeline: Promotion and Productivity at the Departments of Economics in Sweden

Sammanfattning: In this paper, levels of productivity at Swedish academic departments of economics are measured in order to understand why there are so few women at the higher ranks. A probability model is constructed to study if there are any gender differences in promotion within the labour market of academic economists. A unique data set consisting of 245 academic economists, with a complete record of publications between the years of 1990 to 2015, is used. By weighting each publication according to journal quality indices, productivity for every researcher can be assessed and controlled for on an annual basis. The use of event history analysis allows for both the inclusion of censored individuals and time-varying variables. Our findings show that gender has no significant effect on the likelihood of promotion within the departments of economics in Sweden during the period 1990-2015, after controlling for productivity. The conclusion is that the leaky pipeline cannot be explained by gender differences in promotion given a certain level of productivity.