Different Sight Lines

• Author: Ann Mari May
• Position: Professor of Economics at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln.

Companies with female board members routinely outperform competitors whose boards include no women, according to a recent study by the Credit Suisse Research Institute. Growing interest in the subject of gender diversity on corporate boards and in governmental policymaking positions has produced a powerful and expanding literature and generated lively debate about the benefits of gender diversity.

How and why does providing gender balance in decision-making teams enhance group decision making and outcomes? Suggestions abound. Most compelling are the findings of Columbia University psychology professor Katherine Phillips and colleagues (2011), who examined the impact of greater diversity in teams and found that individuals are, on average, likely to do more preparation for any exercise if they know it will involve working with a diverse, rather than a homogenous, group. The researchers explain that a wider range of alternatives are likely to be debated in a diverse group, that diversity encourages people in the majority to think more critically about the issues on which they are working, and that a diverse group will more likely generate better results than a homogenous one.

Gender diversity is now not just an issue of fairness, but also one of performance and outcomes. The question is no longer whether gender diversity matters, but how it can be achieved.

Belief in the benefits of improved gender balance in economic policymaking is predicated, at least in part, on the notion that male and female economists may indeed hold different views on economic policy—an assertion largely untested until now.

Although studies of the economics profession have shown a fair degree of consensus on a variety of policy questions, the profession’s demographics have been changing. Whereas women received only 19.8 percent of U.S. doctorates in economics in 1988, by 2011 women were awarded 34.4 percent of such degrees. Given these changes, gender differences in views on economic policy, if they exist, may begin to have significant implications for policymaking.

Core beliefs

We surveyed a random sample of male and female members of the American Economic Association who received doctoral training in the United States. After controlling for the decade in which subjects received their Ph.D. degrees and type of current employment, our survey found some similarities but also important differences in the views of these economists, breaking along gender lines. In fact...