Women Economists in Italy: A Bibliometric Analysis of their Scientific Production in the Past Decade

The aim of this paper is to offer a contribution to the analysis of the under-representation of women economists in academic positions in Italy, focusing on publications. In Italy women’s proportion of PhDs in Economics and Statistics has increased from 39 to 52 per cent in the last decade. Despite this progressive feminization of doctoral degrees in economics, the share of women working as academic staff in departments of Economics at Italian universities is still low: women constitute 28.1% of academic economists in Italy; in particular, women account for 16% of full professors and 27% of associate professors (data for 2010). The much-debated reform of the Italian university system (so called ‘Gelmini’ reform) is stressing the importance of ‘merit evaluation’ for academics and consequently it is supporting the use of bibliometric indicators for the purposes of selection. In this context, we aim to assess whether the systematic differences between Italian men and women in terms of academic career in economics, can be explained by their productivity in the last ten years. In order to do so, we first study, from a gender perspective, how the profile of economists who have become full professors in the last decade has changed in terms of individual characteristics and scientific productivity. Then, we study gender differences in the scientific output of academic economists since 2001, in order to find out about differences between men and women and complete the picture of the gender gap in career for economists in the Italian University.