The Canadian Women Economists Committee/Comité des Femmes Économistes Canadiennes was created in 2017 as a standing committee of the Canadian Economic Association charged with supporting and promoting the advancement of women in the Canadian economics profession. We interpret 'women' broadly, to include those who identify as a woman and those whose gender expression may be perceived by society as being associated with being a woman or female.
It follows directly from the Canadian Women Economist Network (CWEN) which was founded in 1990 as an independent association of persons interested in promoting women economists and their ideas. The change from CWEN to CWEC recognizes that this responsibility of supporting and promoting women does not just fall on women alone, but on the profession as a whole. Over the past three decades, CWEC/CWEN has been instrumental in promoting women’s involvement with and within the wider Canadian economics community.
Check out our Winter 2024 Newsletter featuring an article about Claudia Goldin and an interview with Brenda Eaton.
Check out our Fall 2024 Newsletter featuring an interview with Nina Banks and reports on CWEC/CFEC's CEA activities.
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Follow us on X: @CdnWomenEcon
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LinkedIn: Canadian Women Economists Committee
Upcoming Events:
CWEC/CDEC Fall Job Market Mentoring: Job Market Pitch Sessions
Sign up by November 22! Click this link for student registration for the “Job market pitch” sessions.
The Canadian Women Economics Committee (CWEC) and Canadian Diversity in Economics Committee (CDEC) are hosting two sessions for all current job market candidates to practice—and get feedback on—their three to five-minute "pitch".
If you are a PhD student at a Canadian institution and/or a member of the Canadian Economics Association, and are on the job market this year, we invite you to join us.
These pitches are often an important part of your first-round interview. We will set you up into groups with other job market candidates and volunteers who have experience in the job market process.
The sessions will be on Tuesday November 26 and Monday December 2. They begin at 8PM Eastern and will require approximately 1 to 1.5 hours of your time. Spaces are limited and you will be assigned to only one of the dates.
We hope you are able to join us! Please sign-up by November 22. Click this link for student registration for the “Job market pitch” sessions.
Early career Women Economists: Lunch-Time Series
The Canadian Women Economist Committee (CWEC/CFÉC) is hosting a brownbag series this winter 2024. It will be held on the last Monday of every month from October 2024 to April 2025 except December (10 AM PT/11 AM MT/12 PM CT/1 PM ET/2 PM AT).
Sign up as presenter for our Brown Bag lunch time series
Sign up as discussant for our Brown Bag lunch time series.
Join our general mailing list to receive the zoom link for each date.
NOVEMBER 25, 2024 at 10 AM PT/11 AM MT/12 PM CT/1 PM ET/2 PM AT
Speaker # 1: Serena Canaan
Title: "The Disparate Long-run Impacts of Academic Probation".
Abstract:
Academic probation is a nearly universal policy in all North American universities. Broadly defined, academic probation involves notifying low-performing students that they need to improve their GPA or they will eventually be dismissed from university. Probation may widen socioeconomic gaps in educational attainment and in the labor market if it disproportionately discourages low-income students. However, it is still unclear whether probation has disparate impacts on students from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Additionally, its effects on labor market outcomes are still poorly understood. Our paper aims to fill these gaps in the literature. To do so, we draw on rich linked administrative data for all first-year students entering a large public university in the state of California from 2007 to 2009. We use a regression dis- continuity design that leverages as-good-as-random variation in the likelihood that students are placed on academic probation based on a 2.0 GPA cutoff. Results indicate that academic probation has negative effects on 6-year graduation and earnings but estimates are not statistically significant at conventional levels. These overall effects mask substantial heterogeneity based on socioeconomic background. High-income students’ academic and labor market outcomes are largely unaffected by probation. However, low-income students experience a significant 27.6 percentage point (42%) decrease in 6-year graduation rates and a 42% drop in earnings. Our results have important policy implications for ongoing discussions on the widening of socioeconomic gaps in the U.S.
Speaker # 2: Jing Cui
Title: “The Gender Unemployment Gap in Canada.”
Abstract:
This paper examines the gender unemployment rate gap in Canada over the past four decades. Using data from the Labour Force Survey, the study finds that changes in age and education composition do not explain the evolution of this gap. A stock-flow decomposition reveals that the large positive gender unemployment gap before 1980 is primarily driven by differences in the employment-to-non-participation flow between men and women, while the negative gap observed since 1990 is largely due to differences in the employment-to-unemployment flow. The paper also finds that industry and occupation composition, part-time status, and deviations from the industry-occupation average tenure significantly contribute to the gender gap in the employment-to-unemployment transition. Furthermore, the study observes that the unemployment rates for men and women with a college degree have converged since 2000, a convergence mainly driven by the alignment of employment separation flows between highly educated men and women.
Past Events
International Women's Day Lecture on Zoom
Nava Ashraf
Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
Inspire Inclusion
Watch the video of the talk here
About the Presenter:
Professor Ashraf’s research combines psychology and economics, using both lab and field experiments to test insights from behavioural economics in the context of global development in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. She also conducts research on questions of intra-household decision making and gender norms in the areas of finance, fertility, and labor force participation. Her papers are published in leading journals including the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Journal of Economic Perspectives. Her field experiments on health services delivery and educational investment have been carried out jointly with the Ministries of Health and Education in Zambia, using a model of co-generation of knowledge, reaching national and global scale.
Job Market Mentoring Events - Videos and Slide Decks
Thank you to all the mentors and mentees who took part in this year's fall mentoring events focusing on the job market.
A. Application Tips
- Slides Part A
- Slides Part B
- Video
B. Presentation Tips
- Slides Part A
- Slides Part B
- Video
Contact information:
Email us at cwec.cfec [at] gmail.com
Follow us on X: @CdnWomenEcon
BlueSky: @cdnwomenecon.bsky.social
LinkedIn: Canadian Women Economists Committee
We use QuestionPro's Survey software to collect the student and faculty data that is analyzed in the 2022 CWEC/CFEC Survey Report on the Representation of Women Economists in Canada’s Universities.