Peripheral voices: women in international trade scholarship

Abstract

Abstract We ask how women are faring in the field of international trade both as knowledge producers and as policy-makers, with a focus on the former. This is an important question in light of the increased, if belated, attention paid to the gendered impact of international trade rules and of the gendered nature of academia. Using article publishing as a proxy for international trade scholarship, we create a unique dataset consisting of trade-related articles published in the 27 most influential journals in the field during the past 20 years. Examining the gender balance of authors in our database reveals that, despite recent progress, women's voices are still peripheral in the field, comprising just 31.5 percent of authors in the past five years. We find no reasons to believe this is a peculiarity of knowledge creation in the field of international trade. Rather, the analysis suggests that it is the highly gendered nature of the broad fields of International Relations and International Political Economy that explains the gender imbalance we find. Looking ahead, if we are serious about addressing gender imbalances in international trade policy-making and knowledge production, new knowledge and strategies are needed that address the structural reasons that contribute to the arbitrary but very real gender inequalities both in academia and policy-making. Ensuring women scholars and policy-makers are fully represented in formulating and implementing these strategies is a basic, even if insufficient, precondition for their success. Only after the weaknesses and hurdles are addressed will the deterrence and defence of the region attain a fully credible level.