Colloquium: 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 their inception until today). We first document that the share of women amongeditorial board members has steadily increased over time. 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 40,000 economists. Last, 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 to the most prominent economists of our profession.