Women, Economics, and Household Economics: The Relevance of Workshops Founded by Nobel Laureate Gary Becker, and of Jacob Mincer

Abstract

Gary Becker founded two workshops: the Labor Workshop at Columbia University in 1958 and the Applications of Economics Workshop at Chicago in 1970. At Columbia, Becker ran the Labor Workshop for more than a decade; Jacob Mincer co-directed it for about half of that time and then became its principal director. The workshops fostered novel applications of economics to areas like household economics, labor economics and economics of human capital. These workshops had a relatively high proportion of women participating in them. We find that in the years 1960–1980, when Becker and Mincer published pioneering research in household economics, the odds that a PhD in Economics was obtained by a woman were 5.6 times higher among those who had participated in any Becker-founded workshop than among those who had participated in another workshop at Columbia or Chicago. The odds that a graduate was a woman were higher for Columbia than for Chicago and were highest for the Columbia workshop after Becker left for Chicago and Mincer became its principal director. These findings are consistent with women at that time showing a relatively strong interest in household economics combined with the novelty and innovation of the work, the topics covered and the approach taken in the Becker-founded workshops.