A New Center Spotlights the Work of Women Economists

Mary Clare Peate (right), senior economic education specialist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, interviews Senior Economic Research Advisor Marina Azzimonti (left) and Senior Policy Economist Arantxa Jarque, both of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.

To help address the underrepresentation of women in economics and connect more women in the field, the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond recently launched its Center for Advancing Women in Economics (AWE).

Marina Azzimonti, the center’s director, shared how AWE’s goals align with the Federal Reserve’s aim to conduct policy that takes into account a broad and diverse set of viewpoints, including those of women.

“Women tend to be underrepresented in the profession,” she said during an April 5 Women in Economics Podcast Series interview with the St. Louis Fed. “This could be a way to help them both succeed in their academic careers and also get involved into policymaking.”

Azzimonti was joined by Arantxa Jarque, the center’s associate director, for the podcast episode hosted by the St. Louis Fed’s Mary Clare Peate. Both Azzimonti and Jarque explained the impetus for the center, referencing statistics about how women don’t always have the proper support when progressing through their careers.

“Data from CSWEP (Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession) documents that, even though 34% of Ph.D.s are women when they graduate from the university, a much lower number of them becomes assistant professor or economists in the Fed, and the amount that get to senior professors or tenured professors is even smaller. It’s around 19%,” Azzimonti said. “So, there’s this leaky pipe where we lose a lot of women in the middle.”

Data collection has been a focus of AWE since its launch and has helped shape the direction of the center. As one of its first projects, AWE began building a directory of women with Ph.D.s in economics and related fields who are employed by the Federal Reserve System.

“The directory is one of our big initiatives. We are very excited to launch it and to make it grow, and we hope that in five to 10 years this becomes the go-to place to look for women working in a range of fields within economics, both in terms of academia and policymaking,” Azzimonti said. “And for this, we need to grow it, and that’s going to take us a while. But we hope to include the broader profession as time goes by.”

Along with their data collection effort, Azzimonti and Jarque described two other focus areas for AWE: mentoring women in economics, for which they created a fellowship program; and helping to showcase the high-quality research of women economists at the Fed, including interviewing them about their experiences.

Azzimonti and Jarque have a clear idea of what future success looks like for the center.

“We have succeeded as a center to promote the advancement of women in economics when we become irrelevant. Right?” Jarque stated. “Hopefully, in five to 10 years we have shut down the center because we’re convinced that women do not face any barriers and we see that their work is well represented in the profession’s mainstream. That would be amazing.”

A transcript of the podcast episode is available at Women in Economics: Marina Azzimonti and Arantxa Jarque.