EJMR must come to an end:
Also, a week ago, Alice Wu, a Berkeley undergraduate specializing in machine learning, published new research in an article published by Justin Wolfers in the Fresh York Times. Her study analyzed articles on the website Economics Job Market Rumors (EJMR) and found (though this is a generous read) that women mentioned there were more likely to get personal responses than social ones. Women were more likely than men to experience verbal threats, insults, and verbal abuse.
[August 28, 2017]: Update #1 The owner of EJMR, who goes by the name Kirk, published a new post shortly after this one. Here’s how it started:
EJMR opposes sexism:
EJMR:
EJMR is against sexism and always will be. The website has evolved significantly over time to combat sexually explicit posting efforts thanks to a large team of administrators, strict content control policies, and a bot designed to automatically remove these rejectable posts. In my opinion, you would not be able to identify most of the comments listed as most offensive in the study using the most recent data, because they have been in the auto-deletion bot for over a year. Unfortunately, because the bot focuses on recent posts to minimize its impact on the server, it would not remove those terms from older posts.
The top 30 terms most specifically related to conversations about women were hot, lesbian, bb (internet slang for “baby”), sexism, breast, anal, marry, feminazi, slut, hot, vagina, breast, pregnant, pregnant, cute, married, levy, beautiful, anus, in love, gorgeous, secretary, dump, shopping, date, non-profit, intentions, sexy, old-fashioned, and whore. Terms more specifically associated with men, on the other hand, include: burn, award, Philadelphia, group, kfc, Nobel, CMT, funny, senior, textbook, goals, furious, ceiling, pointing, episode, essays, genes, e7ee, counselor, troublemaker, reformer, fighter, Wharton, Austrian, fieckers, homo, and genetics.
It was not a good representation of the economics profession:
EJMR:
At first, I thought that this kind of behavior was normal for the Internet and that we had far more pressing concerns to address when it came to gender issues in economics. Tyler Cowen wrote this insightful essay about the drawbacks of having a tenure system, so I wasn’t the only one. Also the Financial Times’ Diane Coyle.
I’ve changed my opinion, as the title of this post makes clear. EJMR is an issue, and we must take action to address it. My justification is that it doesn’t take long to browse the website and observe how poorly women are treated. Wu’s research, by focusing on words rather than context, if anything understates the severity of the issue. It’s not a pretty context.
But the fact that, particularly, ladies is crucial:
EJMR:
Hardly any female economist hasn’t occasionally come across disparaging remarks on the website. Furthermore. Based on the Twitter conversation surrounding this, individuals who have interacted with them in person always leave those comments. Put differently. As a woman attending a conference or seminar, you can gaze out at a sea of people and know that one or more of them has threatened you with violence in the worst situations. To make matters worse, they carried out their actions in secret. EJMR severely injures women in our line of work.
How can this be resolved?
EJMR:
Changing its methods would be one option for EJMR. However. We have no idea who controls it. It should also trouble us that everything is hidden under a veil of anonymity. To begin bringing about that change, it would be easy to use Wu’s study and outlaw any words that she has found to be connected to stereotyping. The research is available and may be easily put into practice. That could be a good place to start. But as you can understand. It could go very rapidly. Something more robust is required. My more important idea is straightforward and. if I may say so. Financial:
Follow the money:
EJMR is a website that is funded by advertisements. It is valued at about $100,000 by one service. On the website. There are two kinds of adverts. I
Google Ad Sense advertisements & Finance:
EJMR:
Google Ad Sense advertisements come first. Google is serving up these advertisements, which include sponsors like the Financial Times. However, Google has terms and conditions, and the following one about “dangerous and derogatory content” seems to apply. Although we firmly support the right to free speech, we forbid the commercialization of harmful or disparaging content.
Google advertisements therefore cannot be shown on websites that make threats or encourage violence to oneself or other people intimidate, harass, or abuse a person or group of people.
Foments hatred encourages prejudice against or denigrates a person or group on the grounds of their sexual orientation, gender identity, age, nationality, veteran status, religion, handicap, race or ethnic origin, or any other trait linked to systemic discrimination or marginalization.
You are free to voice complaints about any website here, and I have (using Wu’s study as support). That might also be done by pointing to specific postings.
The second kind of advertisement:
EJMR:
The second kind of advertisement seems to be permanent. It is the website of Mr. David Jones in the United Kingdom. However, the economics profession provides funding for the job listings on that website. To the best of my understanding, they are unrelated to EJMR, yet it appears that they have a significant financial tie with them. Stated differently, who is paying for EJMR? Indeed, we are!
A few days ago, I contacted Econ-Jobs’ help website, and they are currently investigating the problem. However, I fail to see how any employer of economists can post a job on Econ-Jobs knowing that the positions will appear on EJMR in the interim.
EJMR Qualifies:
EJMR:
Some may now wonder whether harming EJMR can be considered a violation of freedom of expression. I am not in favour of a legislative measure. Moreover, while I do not want them to exist, I am not suggesting that they cannot exist. In fact, I think it is conceivable to create a website where people can discuss issues of “internal economics” without having to resort to the kind of personal attacks on specific professionals that we see here. So, things could change in theory.
