Justin Wolfers, Axios: Women were "barely thought of, if at all," in economists' past labor market empirical analysis says Justin Wolfers, an economist at the University of Michigan. Plus, where it was standard for men to study men in the labor market — women studying women was seen as work on a "special interest" and a mark of "not being serious," he says.
The birth control pill was one of the most extraordinary technologies of the second half of the 20th century, says Wolfers, yet it hadn't been the focus of serious economic research. "At the time we knew more about the diffusion of hybrid corn." The fact that other economists didn't pick up on this, he says, "is a marker of the extraordinary black hole, the extraordinary vacuum, left by the absence of women in nearly a generation of economics."
