starting in the 1980s, and their ranks are increasing
over time. We make the case that women have
increased the relevance in the field of agricultural eco-
nomics through their diverse interests, perspectives,
and experiences. We document how women have chan-
ged the profession of agricultural economics in both aca-
demia and government. In research, women have
expanded the field's treatment of non-traditional topics
such as food safety and nutrition and environmental and
natural resource economics. In this sense, women saved
the profession from a future as a specialty narrowly
focused on agricultural production and markets.
KEYWORD S
Agricultural Economists, Contributions, Leadership, Women
J E L C LA S S I F I CA T I ON
A14; J16; Q1
When significant numbers of women entered the field of agricultural economics in the 1980s, theysaved the field from a future as a narrow specialty with a focus limited to production, commercialagriculture, and farm management. Enrollment in agricultural colleges had fallen through the1960s but was revitalized in the 1970s by the matriculation of women and other students withoutfarm backgrounds. Women's interest in addressing societal challenges catalyzed expansion of thediscipline's academic agenda to include study of the economics of the environment and naturalresources, food safety and nutrition, and global rural and agricultural development. It is worthexamining the path that women have taken in agricultural economics to understand how their dis-tinctive approaches have expanded the traditional template followed by agricultural economists andelevated its relevance for public policy and commercial applications.
In this article, we consider the role of women in expanding and enhancing the contributionsof a field that had for decades focused mainly on the economics of production agriculture andfarm management to a field that embraces a more extensive set of topics, including some of theparamount issues of our time, such as addressing climate change and the environment, ensur-ing the availability of long-term energy resources, feeding the growing world population withinternational development, nudging better nutritional choices that reduce obesity, and makingfood safer.
We review evidence that shows women often have made different choices than men when itcomes to specialty fields in economics. We examine hypotheses that may explain these differ-ences and consider their implications. Women have different experiences than men. It is mostoften the case that people have different expectations of women. This diversity of experiencesand perspectives brings new ideas and innovation. Women are disproportionally placed in therole of caregiver, including meal preparation and taking care of children and homes. It may notbe surprising that they applied economics to think about how to provide safer and more nutri-tious food and to improve health and environmental quality.
Then we turn to the historical record to demonstrate how women have changed agriculturaleconomics in both academia and government. Women have shown a distinctive emphasis onsolving problems faced by society. Women are more likely to choose to study economics whenthey can see its potential for addressing societal challenges. Certainly, men and women alikeseek better outcomes for human well-being and the environment, but women, once engaged,appear disproportionately likely to choose specialties in economics that address those societalchallenges most directly.
We assess the participation of women in the field's professional society and the extent towhich it has recognized the contributions of women, and also examine women's presence aseditors in the profession's peer-reviewed journals. Though their ranks are relatively small,women have nonetheless made significant contributions to agricultural economics, as is set outin the accompanying articles in this issue. Their track record establishes the motivation forgreater inclusion of women and for recognition of the role they have played in the evolution ofthe field.
WOMEN AND ECONOMICS
Women are under-represented in the broader field of economics. A few statistics will serve asreminders of this fact. About one-third of economics majors were women, even though theyaccounted for half of all undergraduates between 2011 and 2015 (Bullard, 2019). In 2019,women earned one-third of doctorates in economics, while half of the doctorates in all STEMfields were awarded to women (National Science Foundation Survey of EarnedDoctorates, 2021). Women in 2019 accounted for 14.5% of full professors in economics depart-ments that granted PhDs (Chevalier, 2019).
As for agricultural economics, women accounted for about a third of undergraduates in thelargest departments that reported in 2020 (United States Department of Agriculture Food andAgricultural Education Information System, 2021). Women earned one-third of agriculturaleconomics doctorates in 2019, the lowest share of all fields in the agricultural sciences, in whichwomen overall earned 44% of PhDs (National Science Foundation Survey of EarnedDoctorates, 2021). On faculties of agricultural economics, women represented 20% of all fullprofessors (Committee on Women in Agricultural Economics, 2020). In the Federal
2 OFFUTT AND MCCLUSKEY
government, most female agricultural economists are employed by USDA, where their propor-tion of all PhD economists has been about 30% (Wessell et al., 2019). No comparable data areavailable for women trained as agricultural economists who work in private firms and non-profit organizations, though similar under-representation can be reasonably surmised.
BENEFITS OF DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION
One argument for integrating women (as well as under-represented minority scholars) intoagricultural economics turns on considerations about equity and diverse perspectives. Disciplin-ary fields thrive and expand when they are populated by all students and professionals regard-less of race, gender, national or ethnic origin, religion, age, marital status and sexualorientation, and disability. The field's main professional society, the Agricultural and AppliedEconomics Association (AAEA), is clear in its support for this goal (AAEA Anti-harassmentand Code of Conduct Policy, 2021), as are employers in universities, public agencies, and theprivate sector. However, both overt discrimination and implicit bias may work to retardprogress in this regard (Bayer & Rouse, 2016), and efforts to overcome these barriers to the fullparticipation of women should continue.
In this article, we focus on women in agricultural (and associated applied) economics, mostof whom are White. But we recognize the imperative to bring under-represented minoritygroups (Blacks in particular) more fully into the profession. It is worth further study to assesswhether support and encouragement of women currently in this field would serve to inspire thepromotion and aspirations of female and male students and professionals who identify as Black,Latinx, and Native American.
Equity and diversity perspectives can contribute in positive ways to the study and practiceof economics. As Bayer and Rouse (2016) set out, diversity brings exposure to differing views onproblem definition and policy and promotes constructive change in group dynamics and deci-sion making. McCluskey (2019) identifies the contribution of diversity to creativity and infor-mation diffusion, pointing to the perils of “group think” in homogenous groups.
With respect to group dynamics, women often bring different attitudes to group delibera-tions, tending to be more risk-averse and less likely to exhibit overconfidence (Yellen, 2019).The “wisdom of crowds,” as McCluskey (2019) notes, arises out of the uncorrelated informationheld across members, and diversity likewise can result in insights that would not be available togroups composed mainly of one gender or the other. Indeed, research groups that exhibitdiversity across investigators appear to produce higher quality output (Bayer & Rouse, 2016). Insettings relevant to the advancement of agricultural economics, such as leading the professionalsociety and organizing presentations at professional meetings, less gender homogeneity amongdecision makers has also been beneficial.
WOMEN AND MEN AND ECONOMICS
Women and men are often attracted to the study of economics for different reasons. Their pathsmay diverge when choosing a research topic. They are frequently split on the role of govern-ment in solving social problems. There is some evidence and much conjecture as to why thesedistinctive patterns exist, but, whatever the explanation, their existence has implications for theacceptance and advancement of women as students and as professional economists.
OFFUTT AND MCCLUSKEY 3
Most of the findings we review come from studies of economists grouped without regard tospecialty. The extent to which these findings also apply to agricultural economics cannot beestablished definitively in the absence of comparable analyses of the field. However, we believethe attribution of these findings in general economics to agricultural economists is validbecause under-representation of women is common to both. Moreover, there is also consider-able heterogeneity in topic focus among the economists who comprise the membership ofAAEA, which defines the group of economists of main interest to us. It is also obvious thatwomen are not a monolithic group and have made choices to study a range of topics, from farmmanagement and commodity markets to consumer choice and well-being.
At the outset, women are less likely than men to choose to study economics. If they do takeit up, what apparently appeals to them is often not the same as what attracts men. Undergradu-ate enrollment in economics skews toward men, who were two-thirds of the total in recentyears (Bullard, 2019), and the share has been comparable in agricultural economics(Lim et al., 2014). When queried, women frequently report a view of economics as focused onmaking money and emphasizing math skills, while their interests likely lie in using economictools to explore global poverty and equality and other topics with socio-distributional aspects(Bansak & Starr, 2010). Leading introductory economics textbooks mention men three times asoften as women, and, as a result, it may be that women do not see themselves in economics(Stevenson & Zlotnick, 2018). The (inaccurate) perception that the principles and practices ofeconomics do not align with their interests may thus lead to women's rejecting its study.
Women who pursue economics often concentrate on studying social rather than firm-levelproblems. As Yellen (2019) notes, women are more often drawn to what she calls “people-ori-ented” fields like health, education, development, and labor. These preferences are reflected,for example, in the frequency of female authorship of papers in these fields, as found in an eval-uation of the gender of participants in the National Bureau of Economic Research SummerInstitute (Chari & Goldsmith-Pinkham, 2017). In the sessions in which paper topics concernedfinance and macroeconomics, 17.5% of the authors were women. In contrast, the sessions thataddressed labor and public economics had almost twice the representation of women at 30.5%.
Looking across paper sessions at the AEA annual meetings, Beneito et al. (2018) confirmedthe male bias toward finance and macroeconomics and the stronger presence of women inmicro-oriented topics like employment discrimination. They also evaluated the choices offemale undergraduate majors in Spanish universities and found a “preference for microeconom-ics [that] is fairly closely related to the degree to which this subfield is perceived to be connectedto social problems” (p. 31). In top-ranked economics departments in the United States andEurope, tenured women faculty are most likely to specialize in labor and public economics(Dolado et al., 2005). They observed what they deem “path dependence” in women's choices,where the likelihood that a female student chooses a given specialty is positively related to theshare of women working in it.
To the extent that women are drawn to study problems that address societal issues, it isworth knowing whether their views on the possibilities for government intervention align withthose of men. Here, the evidence from surveys suggests another divergence between the gen-ders. A survey of U.S. economists found that while female and male economists agree on much,on average, they hold different opinions with respect to wage gaps and other labor market out-comes as well as health insurance, among others (May et al., 2018). These same authorsreported results from a survey in the European Union that women, compared to men, weremore likely to consider government solutions, were more inclined to favor environmental regu-lation, and more often saw gender-based differences in labor market outcomes.
4 OFFUTT AND MCCLUSKEY
What underlies these differences between women and men? One explanation concerns thepolitical context. Voting patterns differ between men and women with respect to social policy,so perhaps it should be expected to carry over to their preferences for fields of study in economics.Women have become increasingly motivated to participate in politics over time, with successivegenerations since suffrage demonstrating ever more political mobilization (Cascio &Shenhav, 2020). Shapiro and Mahajan (1986) found that women were more likely to support gov-ernment action on “compassion” issues to do with social welfare and to favor spending and regu-lation with the aim of environmental protection. In the case of agricultural economics, thisheightening of political consciousness coincides with the entry of women who were interested inthe environment, in food and consumer choices, and in rural and international development.
Another possibility is that women may be socialized to choose fields of study thought to beappropriate for their gender. At the time women started to enter new fields, Strober andReagan (1976) suggested that such conditioning could explain why women most often said theyentered the field of economics to help people, a motivation the authors identify as feminine innature. Women often emphasized consumer and labor economics and the analysis of popula-tion and of welfare programs. These fields address “the reduction of poverty and suffering”, towhich women attached importance. They noted that men might have this in mind as well butwere less socialized to identify it as a goal. Based on a 1975 survey of male and female econo-mists, Strober and Reagan identified agriculture and natural resources as one of two specialtiesleast likely to be chosen by women. The study of business and finance was the other.
Rooted in more fundamental gender differences, another hypothesis is that women do notlike to compete, even though, if women do choose to compete, they do just as well as men(Gneezy et al., 2003). Such an orientation might then lead women to choose fields of studywhere competition with men can be avoided. In agricultural economics, women then mighteschew traditional topics in farm markets, management, and finance. It may also be thatwomen are more alert to social cues than men, and this sensitivity may result in a difference insocial preferences, in which women are less accepting of inequality (Croson & Gneezy, 2009).
A fourth, more general, explanation suggests that underlying cultural beliefs about the roleof women in society likely also influence decisions about education and work, among other sig-nificant life choices (Giuliano, 2020). As an aside, it is interesting to note how agriculture mayhave played a role in establishing cultural beliefs. In her influential work, Esther Boserupattributed the historical persistence of differentiation in gender roles to the initial use by somecultures of the plow in cultivation (Alesina et al., 2013). Plowing, in contrast to techniques ofshifting farming, required the greater strength of men and moved women out of the fields intothe home, where these cultures imagine they belong to this day. Whatever the origin, culturalbeliefs and bias do affect women's decisions in ways that can be relevant to the selection of eco-nomics as a field of study. As an example, Giuliano noted the gender gap in test performance inmathematics and observed the strong correlation with maternal gender role that exists for girlsbut not boys. Such influences are subtle but can be powerful.
The evidence we review suggests a basis for expecting systematic differences between men andwomen in their predisposition to study economics and the choice of specialty once engaged.Women's interest in social policy is a strong theme, and this may also be an attractant for Black,Latinx, and Native American scholars in economics (Bayer et al., 2020). If women do not see thateconomics offers the opportunity to study what matters to them, their talents may be lost to thefield. Beyond a pre-emptive brain drain, the field will suffer when problem definitions are con-strained, and the menu of policy options is limited. The organizations and institutions that supportthe profession will also be robbed of the benefits of diversity of experience and opinion.
OFFUTT AND MCCLUSKEY 5
WOMEN'S ENTRANCE INTO AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS
Until the 1970s, there were relatively few women in the agricultural sciences. With the impetusof the women's movement and the push toward equal opportunity, women decided to pursuestudy in fields in which there was no precedent for strong female participation. Enrollment inagricultural schools expanded with the matriculation of women—as well as men—from urbanand suburban backgrounds (Templeton, 1978). Women concerned about “world food, economicand environmental problems” were attracted to fields of agricultural education, economics, andengineering, believing in the potential of agricultural science to help solve these problemsdomestically and in developing countries (Templeton, 1978). Anecdotal evidence suggests astrong presence of returning Peace Corps volunteers.
Agricultural economics benefited from this heightened interest. Women enrolled in depart-ments of agricultural economics in the 1970s and gained a modest foothold on universityfaculties. Looking to the example of the American Economic Association (AEA) in recognizingthe growing number of women in general economics, in 1980 women in the AAEA spurred itsleaders to appoint an ad hoc committee on the status of women in the profession. A survey thatyear provided an estimate of 5% of the Association's membership as female. Soon thereafter, theforerunner of today's Committee on Women in Agricultural Economics (CWAE) was formed.Under the leadership of Ardelle Lundeen and others, the group began to assess and promotethe participation of women in the profession.
Although female membership in the AAEA has been increasing over time, a complete timeseries documenting the increase in numbers is unavailable. The Association did not beginincluding a gender question on its membership form until 1998. Between 1980 and 1999,CWAE conducted several tracking surveys of individuals in the membership, and the Employ-ment Services Committee surveyed academic departments to arrive at counts of women stu-dents and faculty. These data-gathering efforts showed some gains, so that by the late 1990s, itappears that women accounted for 14% of AAEA membership. Other data gathered on womenin academic departments also reflected an increased presence on faculties and in graduate stu-dent bodies. All of which presaged a more robust presence in the membership by 2000, whenabout 15% of the total membership identified themselves as female, increasing in 2010 to 20%,and by 2020, around a third (see Figures 1 and 2), based on data supplied by the Association'sBusiness Office at Executive Director, Inc. (EDI).1 Interestingly, it appears that, as numbers ofwomen increased, the number of members who identified themselves as male has been flat ordecreased. The increase in women has helped to stabilize the number of AAEA members,which had previously been declining.
Looking forward, the AAEA student membership has been on an upward trend since 2008(see Figure 3). In 2020, AAEA student members who reported being female surpassed AAEAstudent members who reported being male for the first time. The increase in student member-ship paints a promising picture for the future of the agricultural and applied economics field.
WOMEN'S CHOICE OF SPECIALTY
Although women were increasing in numbers, their interests diverged to some degree fromthose of their male colleagues in the traditional fields of farm management and finance andcommodity market analysis. Instead, women entering a non-traditional field for femalesappeared to be choosing non-traditional specialties in the discipline. Lane (1981) documented
6 OFFUTT AND MCCLUSKEY
that, in the 1970s, the number of White men enrolled as students of agricultural economics wasdeclining, and the profession had already begun to move in new directions. Women reinforcedthis evolutionary change by choosing to study international trade and development, economicsof the environment, and food systems and consumer choices. Redman (1981) observed thatwomen in agricultural economics “do choose human-oriented specialties more often thanbusiness-oriented specialties, whereas for men the opposite is true.” She also raised the questionas to whether the “character” of agricultural economics would change as a result.
A survey of graduate students at Cornell in 1981 found these same choices prevailed amongwomen graduate students, who were also less likely than their male counterparts to have comefrom farms or been undergraduates at agricultural colleges (Offutt, 1982). By the mid-1980s,half of assistant professors in agricultural science disciplines had been raised in metropolitanareas (Cooper & Henderson, 1988). Overall, women in agricultural economics exhibited prefer-ences for specialization that mirrored those of their sisters in general economics rather than
FIGURE 1 AAEA members by gender. Source: 2000–2007 AAEA Ames Business Office, 2008–2020 EDI
FIGURE 2 Percentage of AAEA members who report being female. Source: 2000–2007 AAEA Ames
Business Office, 2008–2020 EDI. Percentages of female members were calculated by dividing the number of
members who reported being female by the number of members who reported being either gender
OFFUTT AND MCCLUSKEY 7
men in agricultural economics. For a fuller picture of the current status of women on universityfaculties, see Hilsenroth et al. (2021).
Surveys of the membership of AAEA and of academic departments have not, in general,inquired about the choice of specialty by women or men. As a result, it is not possible todocument systematically the evolution of women's interests in the two decades after 1980. How-ever, anecdotal evidence points to the influence of women. While AAEA President, LaurianUnnevehr (2004) considered the change in interest areas selected on membership formsbetween 1991 and 2002. She identified the “growth areas” as international agriculture, trade,and development, and also natural resources and environmental economics. Interest in con-sumer economics also grew, while that in the “core fields” of farm management, productioneconomics, and agricultural marketing showed little change.
In 1998, the AAEA adopted sections as a means for members to affiliate with others withthe same topical interests. Beginning in 1999, the Association began tracking the numbers ofmen and women in each section. The past 20 years of data appear to show the affinityof women for non-traditional specialties, although it also appears that in recent years their par-ticipation has become more evenly spread across all topic areas. Compared to their overall shareof the membership in each year, women were over-represented in the sections of food andnutrition, international development, and environment. Also noted is the over-representationin teaching and the under-representation in agribusiness and farm management and financethat diminishes in the most recent years.
Examination of the record of women's publishing in AAEA journals, available through theWiley Online Library, buttresses the story about where women's interests lie. Table 1 presentsinformation on the gender of authors and citations of articles that were published in 2000 to2018 in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics (AJAE), which is broadly consideredto be the flagship journal in the field of agricultural and applied economics. There were 1765articles published over that period.2 For each article, the gender of each author is included,along with the total number of authors.3 Over this 19-year time period, 17.9% of authors of thearticles were female. The percentage of female authors was the lowest in 2004 with only 11.3%female authors and 2007 with 11.5% female authors.
FIGURE 3 AAEA student members by reported gender. Source: EDI
8 OFFUTT AND MCCLUSKEY
The articles are also categorized into sub-topics. On the low end of female representation,sub-topics with less than 15% female authors include production, risk/finance, and economet-rics. In terms of citations, production economics received citations that were not different fromthe overall average of all topics, while the topic of risk/finance received fewer citations per arti-cle, and the topic of econometrics received above average citations per article. On the high endof female representation, sub-topics with greater than 20% of female authors include food safetyand nutrition, rural development, health economics, and consumer/behavioral/experimentaleconomics. With the exception of health economics, all of these sub-topics received above aver-age citations per article. Although health economics is a growing area of economics, it may bethe case that the top articles in this field are not published in AJAE.
Table 2 presents information on the gender of authors and citations of articles that werepublished in the Review of Agricultural Economics and its successor Applied Economic Perspec-tives and Policy from 2003 to 2018. There were 648 articles published over that period, includingconference proceedings in some years. Each article with at least one female author was identi-fied. Over the 15-year period, 38% of articles had at least one female author.
The articles are also categorized into sub-topics. These are generally the same as the onestracked for the AJAE in Table 1, though small numbers in some sub-topics are grouped in an“all other” category. Women authors were most robustly represented in food safety and
TABLE 1 Articles in the American journal of agricultural economics, 2000–2018
nutrition (61% of all articles with at least one female author), in rural development and healtheconomics (56% for each), and in international trade (40%) and environment, natural resources,and energy (36%). The second highest citation rate of all sub-topics was observed for food safetyand nutrition (2.1 cites per year, with international development only slightly higher at 2.2).
WOMEN'S PARTICIPATION IN THE AAEA
As women entered the profession in greater numbers, they increased their participation in theAAEA. This heightened engagement speaks to one of the potential benefits of diversity, withadditional points of view and new talents increasingly integrated into what had historicallybeen a homogenous group of White men with farm backgrounds. That women have profoundlyaltered the AAEA is manifest in the change in its name from the American Agricultural Eco-nomics Association to the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. AAEA's visionstatement says it is a “leading organization for professional advancement in, and disseminationof, knowledge about agricultural, development, environmental, food and consumer, naturalresource, regional, rural, and associated areas of applied economics and business.” Without theentry of women in numbers and with interests in fields beyond farm economics, we surmisethat this expansion of the AAEA's topic portfolio would likely not have happened. Even a cur-sory consideration of the elements of contemporary policy debate will demonstrate that, with-out women, the profile of a more narrowly focused profession would likely have been muchlower.
As for the way AAEA conducts its business, women have been active on committees and asofficers and as conference organizers, though, again, systematic data are not available. Thoughonly one-third of all members in 2020, women held half of all chairs on AAEA committees.
TABLE 2 Articles in the Review of Agricultural Economics/Applied Economics Perspectives and Policy:
2003–2018
Topics No. of articlesPercentage withfemale author
Average cites peryear per article
All topics 648 38% 1.4
Subtopics
Agricultural policy 45 24 0.9
Production 68 37 1.6
Risk/finance 22 18 1.6
Marketing/ind. org. 85 29 1.8
Environ., natural res., energy 107 36 1.6
International trade 48 40 0.8
Food safety & nutrition 101 61 2.1
International development 49 31 2.2
Rural development 25 56 1.1
Health economics 25 56 0.7
All other 73 38 1.4
10 OFFUTT AND MCCLUSKEY
Leadership also reflects a higher profile, in which 7 of 23 presidents since 2000 have beenfemale (see Table 3). Only one woman was president before 2000. While no definitive list hasbeen compiled, there are many examples of women's contributions. CWAE has promoted pro-fessional development as a key role for the Association through the luncheons and sessions thatCWAE has organized. In 2003, Susan Offutt initiated the move of the Association from itsstandalone business office to professional association management. For decades, the business ofthe AAEA was handled by its own office staff, located first at Iowa State University and later inprivate facilities in Ames. Outsourcing back-office functions garnered cost savings and reducedthe administrative burden on presidents and board members. Subsequent presidents managedthe challenging transition, with much of the work done by Steven Buccola.
In 2008, while a member of the Executive Board, Jill McCluskey pushed for and took thelead in redesigning the old AAEA logo to a more modern version. Together with Richard Justand Scott Irwin, McCluskey redesigned the AAEA logo from the backwards-looking eagle withplowshares to one that includes a graph superimposed on a map of the world (see Figure 4).This redesign of the AAEA logo is consistent with our thesis.
WOMEN AND AAEA EDITORSHIPS
The AAEA sponsors three peer-reviewed journals, the American Journal of AgriculturalEconomics and Agricultural and Applied Economics Perspective and, since 2019, AppliedEconomics Teaching Resources. Publishing in these journals is often a key accomplishment thatsupports promotion and advancement in the field. Thus, the presence of women as editors and
TABLE 3 Female presidents AAEA
Term Name
1989–90 Sandra Batie
2001–02 Jean D. Kinsey
2002–03 Susan Offutt
2004–05 Laurian Unnevehr
2013–14 Julie A. Caswell
2015–16 Jill J. McCluskey
2020–21 Dawn Thilmany McFadden
2021–22 Madhu Khanna
FIGURE 4 Redesign of the AAEA logo [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
authors should be taken as a marker of their contributions to and recognition by the profession.Compared to their presence in the field, women have had relatively low representation asjournal editors.
Women have been appointed editors of AAEA journals, which may reflect the profession'sinterest in a wider range of topics. Tables 4 and 5 present the list of female editors of the Ameri-can Journal of Agricultural Economics and the Review of Agricultural Economics and now thesuccessor Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy. Three women have been editors or are cur-rently serving, Segerson being the first in 1996, followed 16 years later by Madhu Khanna in2012 and Amy Ando in 2020. A fourth, Jill McCluskey, starts in July 2021. Four women haveedited the Review of Agricultural Economics and one (at present) the successor AEPP. AETR, thenewest of the journals, has not yet had a female editor.
Having more women as editors of AAEA journals might promote consideration of a broaderrange of topics consistent with their distinctive interests and continue the encouraging trend ofincrease in manuscripts submitted by women for review. It is important for women to beappointed and take on editorships. Often, one's circle of usual collaborators and friends is lessdiverse than the population in question. If this is the case and editors are mostly male, theremay be fewer female reviewers of submitted articles. If there are limited female editors andreviewers, there may be negative implications for female authors in their publishing.
In an effort to explain differences in productivity, Hengel (2017) uses readability scores fromthe field of linguistics to test whether women are held to higher standards in the top five eco-nomics journals. She finds that female-authored papers are written 1% to 6% better than equiva-lent papers by men. The readability gap grows over time. Senior women write at least 9% moreclearly than they otherwise would. Papers written by women take 6 months longer in peerreview (controlling for maternity leave). Hengel's results suggest a quality–quantity tradeoff. Asa result, women produce fewer articles. Hengel describes this as a tax.
Hengel's (2017) findings are a manifestation of an expectations bias. If women are stereotyp-ically assumed to be less capable at math and reasoning, then editors need more evidence to
TABLE 4 Female editors of AJAE
Term Name
1996–1999 Kathleen Segerson
2012–2015 Madhu Khanna
2020–2023 Amy Ando
2021–2024 Jill McCluskey
TABLE 5 Female editors of RAE and AEPP
Term Name
1999–2001 Sarahelen Thompson
2002–2004 Susan Offutt
2002–2004 Kitty Smith Evans
2005–2008 Joan Fulton
2020-present Mindy Mallory
12 OFFUTT AND MCCLUSKEY
rate them as equally competent. As a result, editors might inspect the papers more closely,demand a larger number of revisions, and, in general, be less tolerant of dense, complicatedwriting. Even for double-blind reviews, the author is not blind to the journal editor. It may bethe case that lesser known female economists face more scrutiny than lesser known male econ-omists. As female economists develop reputations as strong researchers, this no longer is a con-cern. Sarsons et al.'s (2017) finding that in economics female faculty receive less credit thanmen when they co-author, unless they co-author with other women, can also potentially beexplained by expectations bias. If women are expected to be less capable, then one might believethat male co-authors must have carried the weight.
WOMEN IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
Looking beyond academic agricultural economics, women have established a strong presencein the Federal government. As noted, women are often oriented to policy analysis, but it is alsothe case that Washington DC has been an attractive location for dual-career couples. Unusuallyfor the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Federal government generally, the EconomicResearch Service (ERS) had female leadership for more than two decades, from 1996 to 2018.As recently as 2014, only a third of the Federal Senior Executive Service was female, and theproportion of agency heads even lower. During this same time, these women (Susan Offutt,Kitty Smith Evans, and Mary Bohman) broadened the ERS portfolio markedly, addingresources and prominence to consumer economics and food and nutrition as well as to naturalresource management and climate change. In moving research and policy analysis beyond tra-ditional topics in farm and commodity market economics, ERS adapted its agenda to emergingpolicy debate. The interest of the administrators and women in senior management (BetseyKuhn, Laurian Unnevehr, Margot Anderson, and Marca Weinberg, among others) in non-traditional topics helped accelerate the expansion.
The actions of the Trump Administration in proposing budget reductions and relocatingmost staff to Kansas City had the effect of reducing the number of women economists andshrinking the agency's expertise in resource, rural, and food safety and nutrition research areas.By the fall of 2020, the number of female economists and other scientists had fallen by twothirds, from 65 to 43, according to data compiled by the ERS Employees Union. Staffing in allresearch divisions fell by about half between October 2017 and October 2019, but since then re-hiring in commodity and market analysis has outpaced that in rural, resource, and food eco-nomics, expanding 33% versus 20% by October 2020. Also noteworthy is the reduction in theproportion of women in the food economics division, from 54% in October 2017 to 36% inOctober 2020.
WOMEN AND AAEA AWARDS
Professional societies exist to promote their discipline and their members' development as stu-dents and professionals. The AAEA states that “professional success depends on professionalrecognition.” Given the rise of women in agricultural economics, how has the AAEA honoredtheir achievements and so advanced their standing as professionals? Here, as an indicator welook to the selection of women as AAEA Fellows (see Table 6), which we take as the highestaccolade given by the Association, and we consider invitations to deliver major plenary lectures
OFFUTT AND MCCLUSKEY 13
at meetings. We also assess the inclusion of women as recipients of what we judge to be themost prestigious annual awards: distinguished policy contribution (now named after the lateBruce Gardner); quality of research discovery; and publication of enduring quality. In additionto affirming their successes, the extent to which women figure in AAEA honors is a measure oftheir integration into the profession and a marker of their visibility that might serve to attractothers to the field.
Since the 1950s, the AAEA has annually chosen a small number (six or fewer) of its mem-bers as Fellows. The AAEA website explains, “Recognition as an AAEA Fellow is AAEA's mostprestigious honor. The main consideration for selecting Fellows is continuous contribution tothe advancement of agricultural or applied economics as defined by the Vision Statement.Achievements may be in research, teaching, extension, administration, and/or other contribu-tions to public or private sector decision-making.”
Since 1980 (there were none before that), women have represented 13% of the total numberof Fellows (20 out of 154). As their numbers in the profession have expanded, however, theirrecognition as Fellows has not been commensurate with the portion of the membership theyrepresent. Recall that women were 5% of the membership in 1980, about 15% in 1998, 20% in2010, and about a third in 2020. Over these past four decades, one woman (Sylvia Lane) wasmade a Fellow in the 1980s, two in the 1990s (6% of the decade's total), eight in the 2000s (16%),five in the 2010s (12%), and one so far in the 2020s. The relatively low numbers in the 1980s
TABLE 6 Women elected as Fellows of AAEA
Year Name
1984 Sylvia Lane
1994 Sandra Batie
1998 Irma Adelman
1999 Uma Lele
2000 Nancy E. Bockstael
2000 Jean D. Kinsey
2005 Susan Offutt
2006 Catherine Louise Kling
2006 Catherine Morrison Paul
2008 Kathleen Segerson
2008 Katherine Smith Evans
2009 Laurian Unnevehr
2011 Julie A. Caswell
2011 Elisabeth Sadoulet
2012 Helen H. Jensen
2016 Madhu Khanna
2017 Damona Doye
2018 Jill McCluskey
2019 Mary Bohman
2021 Jutta Roosen
14 OFFUTT AND MCCLUSKEY
and 1990s might be expected, given that the presence of women emerged strongly only in thelate 1970s and early 1980s, and Fellows are typically well along in their careers when recog-nized. Indeed, the 2000s saw the highest number, eight, women who were mostly 20 yearsbeyond their PhD degrees. However, the tally in the 2010s fell to five, even as the overall num-bers were expanding to account for 30% of the membership by the decade's end.
Beyond the numbers, a few characteristics of the 20 women Fellows stand out. One is thattwo-thirds of them had specialties in food safety and nutrition or in natural resource and envi-ronmental economics, which is not surprising given the documented interest of women in theseareas. Only two were recognized for achievements in traditional specialties: the late CatherineMorrison Paul for work in market structure and performance, and Damona Doye for farm man-agement extension. Seven of the Fellows had been AAEA presidents, again reflecting the ser-vice women have given to the profession. All three women who were ERS administrators weremade Fellows, as their male predecessors had been, as an indicator of leadership in the Federalgovernment sphere.
Selection as a Fellow is important recognition, and so is an invitation to deliver a plenarylecture at AAEA meetings. In the past decade, two women gave the Fellows lecture (LaurianUnnevehr in 2012 and Kathy Segerson in 2014), and a third (Jill McCluskey) is on the programfor 2021. Thus, only 3 of the 18 living female Fellows have been given the visibility provided bythe lecture. Looking more broadly at AAEA invited lecturers, the Galbraith award and lecturethat began in 2004 has featured but two women (Elinor Ostrom in 2008 and Anne Case in 2015),with a third in 2021 (Gita Gopinath). As for the T. W. Schultz lecture, in place since 2006, onlytwo women (Emily Oster in 2015 and Susan Athey in 2020) have delivered it at the AAEA sessionat the Allied Social Science Association meetings. While it is the case that women are under-represented in economics generally and so present a smaller potential pool of speakers, it is hardto argue that the AAEA has taken all the opportunities it might to raise women's profile in theprofession by inviting them to give high-visibility lectures.
There are three annual AAEA awards that are the most prestigious, a position largely attrib-utable to what we judge to be the primacy of research—and, to a somewhat lesser extent,policy—in the esteem of the profession.
• The Bruce Gardner Memorial Prize for Applied Policy Analysis is given for outstandingimpact on agricultural, food, environmental, development and other policy, based on soundeconomic theory in the tradition of Bruce Gardner.
• The Quality of Research Discovery Award is bestowed on a maximum of two publicationsthat demonstrate excellence and creativity in research methodology and/or expand the fron-tiers of applied economics.
• The Publication of Enduring Quality Award is given to one publication from the preceding10 years that had impact on the discipline (chiefly by citations in the literature and subse-quent contributions).
We focus on the awards made since 1990, when women in numbers had been in the professionlong enough to compile a record worthy of recognition. However, only one woman (as a mem-ber of a large group) won an award between 1990 and 1997, so the review begins with 1998. Inthat year, Frances Homans broke the gender barrier by winning the Research Discovery awardwith James Wilen for their article in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management,“A Model of Regulated Open Access Resource Use,” on which she was the lead author. Sixwomen are among the recipients of four awards, all made to groups, for Distinguished Policy
OFFUTT AND MCCLUSKEY 15
Contribution, now Gardner award. It is notable that 15 men won the award as individuals overthe same period. Only one other woman besides Frances Homans has won the Research Dis-covery award, and that was Lori Bennear, a member of the group of co-authors honored in2018 for work on seafood prices and ecological disturbances. As for the Enduring QualityAward, four women have been recognized for four separate publications, and only one, LaurianUnnevehr, has had an active presence in the AAEA. Unnevehr and Cathy Kling are the onlytwo female Fellows ever to have won even one of these three annual awards. Kling has beenelected to membership in the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, anhonor that eclipses in prestige any given by the AAEA.
While women have gained a foothold as Fellows of the AAEA, they are seldom winners ofthe most prestigious annual awards. Of course, it is hard to say with certainty why this mightbe so, but we can conjecture. One explanation might simply be that the quality of work thatwomen do is inferior to that of men. We do not take this as a serious answer. Another, morelikely, possibility is the extra weight that award committees may place on policy and theresearch methodology applied to topics in traditional areas for agricultural economics.Although it is difficult to uniquely attribute each award to a given specialty, it does appear thathalf of the awards in these three categories have gone to contributions in the traditional special-ties. This ratio is out of proportion to the relatively small share of traditional specialties in thedistribution of the interests of the AAEA membership. This suggests that, if AAEA, as a profes-sional association, believes that professional success depends on recognition, it should ensurethat award committees represent the diversity in membership.
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS
Over the past 40 years, women have earned a much larger presence in agricultural economics.Not only did their numbers increase, but their interests outside traditional agricultural topicsprovided impetus to broaden the topics in the profession's portfolio. This expansion has helpedmaintain the relevance of the discipline, especially with respect to applied policy analysis.Whether this evolution would have occurred in the absence of women's heightened participa-tion is a hypothetical question we cannot answer. We can offer the record as evidence thatwomen did make a difference. Further expansion of the number of women can be expected tobring to the profession the benefits of diversity. When women are visible through professionalrecognition, more potential female students are likely to be attracted to study in the fields ofagricultural and applied economics.
In the articles elsewhere in this issue, the contributions of women to research and organiza-tion are examined in detail. Unnevehr et al. (2021) highlight food safety and nutrition econom-ics, and Segerson et al. (2021) discuss contributions in resource and environmental economics.In a third article, Smith Evans and Bohman (2021) examine the prevalence and impact offemale agricultural and applied economists in women in government because of their outsizepresence in Federal agencies, especially compared to academic departments of agriculturaleconomics.
There is opportunity to fill in the gaps in our understanding and appreciation of the role ofwomen's contributions to agricultural economics. In this respect, the AAEA lags the AEA inpursuing consideration of the status of women in the profession. A more complete picture couldaid in recruitment and promotion of women in the field by identifying accomplishments andsuggesting measures to bolster the appeal of agricultural economics. There is much scope for
16 OFFUTT AND MCCLUSKEY
expansion of the topics introduced in the current article. We offer a few questions for furtherstudy, which would be relevant for under-represented minorities as well.
• How do the specialties of women faculty compare with those of their male colleagues? Ischoice of a specialty related to promotion prospects and outcomes?
• What is the role of women in university leadership at the department, college, and campuslevels? How many women have led agricultural economics departments?
• Are female graduate students completing their degrees at the same rate as men? Recent datashow women are half of all doctoral students at some of the largest agricultural economicsdepartments, but overall are awarded only a third of PhDs. Is this a statistical anomaly or alegitimate concern?
• At prominent conferences such as the AAEA annual meetings, how well are women repre-sented? Only a handful of women have been invited to give the Fellows Lecture or theGalbraith or Schultz Lectures. What about their participation in sessions organized by sections?More systematic documentation, along the lines carried out in general economics, could bevaluable.
• And what about sexism? Much attention has been given to documenting its presence in gen-eral economics (see, e.g., Casselman, 2021). How is it manifested in agricultural economics?Women face a lack of representation and, we believe, encounter hostility and paternalism.How can the profession ensure it is welcoming to diversity in gender as well as race andethnicity?
Agricultural economics has a long and proud history of contributions to improvement in thewell-being of people around the world. It is equally well positioned to respond to the challengesof today and the future and will do so most effectively by embracing equity and diversity asguiding principles in study and practice.
ENDNOTES1 There are notable anomalies in the compilation of data from membership forms that preclude making confi-dent conclusions about trends in numbers and gender composition except in terms of direction of change andrelative magnitude.
2 This does not include book reviews. Discussions of conference principal paper sessions are omitted from thedata set. These pieces are generally less than three pages and are not typically cited.
3 In this coding exercise, the gender of many authors was already known to us. For cases in which an author'sgender was unknown, we searched for information about the author, including photos and pronouns used. Weacknowledge the possibility of error but argue it is very small.
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How to cite this article: Offutt, Susan, Jill McCluskey. 2021. “How women savedagricultural economics.” Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1002/aepp.13183
