Gender Differences in Economics Seminars

Pascaline Dupas; Amy Handlan; Alicia Modestino; Muriel Niederle; Mateo Seré; Haoyu Sheng; Justin Wolfers; the Seminar Dynamics Collective

doi:10.1257/aer.20241718

Gender Differences in Economics Seminars

Pascaline Dupas¹; Amy Handlan²; Alicia Modestino³; Muriel Niederle⁴; Mateo Seré⁵; Haoyu Sheng²; Justin Wolfers⁶; the Seminar Dynamics Collective

¹ Princeton, NBER (email: ) · ² Brown (email: ) · ³ Northeastern (email: ) · ⁴ Stanford, NBER (email: ) · ⁵ University College London (email: ) · ⁶ Michigan, NBER (email: )

American Economic Review 2026

We assess whether men and women are treated differently when presenting their economics research. We collected data across thousands of seminars, job market talks, and conference presentations, leveraging human judgment and audio-processing algorithms to measure the number, tone, and type of interruptions. Within a seminar series, women are interrupted more than men. This holds when controlling for characteristics of the presenter, paper, and audience. Interruptions that are negative in tenor or tone or cut off the presenter mid-sentence increase for women presenters. We also find greater engagement of female audience members with female presenters, suggesting a potential role model effect. (JEL A11, C45, J16, J44)

DOI: 10.1257/aer.20241718
Volume: 116 (2)
Pages: 749-789
Language: en
Export: BibTeX
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