Gender balance in academia: Evidence from finance departments

Abstract

Females are underrepresented in academic finance departments, especially among senior faculty. Using information on 2910 finance scholars from 387 universities worldwide, we show that although females have become more common in finance departments over the past 30 years, yet only one in ten full professors are women. We explore whether this gap is associated with a lower likelihood of female faculty transitioning into higher academic ranks and find no significant difference between the sexes. While we cannot rule out the existence of a glass ceiling impacting women, partly due to their higher exit rates from the profession, we primarily attribute the low representation of female finance professors to historic male-centric recruitment activity. Due to the length of time for early-career academics to reach full professor status, gender imbalance at the most senior levels in finance is likely to continue for several years.