History & Past Events

2005 EEA Congress, Amsterdam: a meeting point was organised for female economists

2006 EEA-ESEM Congress, Vienna: a meeting point was organised, and nursery facilities were provided for the first time during an EEA congress

2007 EEA-ESEM, Budapest: a lunchtime networking reception was held. WinE also sponsored a very well-attended workshop on successful publishing.

2008 EEA-ESEM, Milan: both the lunchtime networking reception and a workshop (this time on getting tenure) was repeated.

2010 EEA, Glasgow: an informal gathering during a break that was open to all EEA members was held and the participants discussed issues about women in economics.

2010: WinE put forward a proposal for an award dedicated solely to female economists.

2011: the institution of the Birgit Grodal Award - a prize to a European-based female economist who has made a significant contribution to the Economics profession - was announced.

2011 EEA-ESEM, Oslo: WinE held a special open session and discussed two main issues: first, the appallingly low numbers of women in economics, and second, the implications that this lack of female representation has both for research and policymaking and its externalities on society as a whole. The speakers were Per Krusell and Helene Rey and the session was chaired by Silvana Tenreyro. The WinE committee members also used the opportunity of the session to discuss the future activities of the committee, one of which was the setting up of a mentoring programme in future congresses.

2012 EEA-ESEM, Malaga: WinE held their first lunchtime invited session.  Raquel Fernandez, New York University, chaired the session, entitled "The Gender Gap", and to an audience of approximately 200, Raquel presented her paper "The Disappearing Gender Gap: The Impact of Divorce, Wages, And Preference on Education and Women's Work"', while Paul Seabright and Marie Lalanne, Toulouse School of Economics, presented their paper "The Old Boy Network: Gender Differences in the Impact of Social Networks on Renumeration in Top Executive Jobs".

2013 EEA-ESEM, Gothenburg: the WinE Mentoring Retreat was inaugurated, and has been held every year since (virtual in 2020 & 2021).

2017 – 2018: In answer to the question on how to address the problem of gender unbalance if it is not known exactly how bad the problem is and where the bottlenecks are, WinE invested in the development of a web scraper programme whose objective is to monitor the status of women in the profession in Europe and undertake information collection.

2017 EEA-ESEM, Lisbon: WinE organised a lunch session: Women in Economics: Career in Academia in the EU and in the US ", around this data collection. The two invited speakers were Guido Friebel from Goethe University and WinE Committee member who developed the web scraper, and Janet Currie from Princeton University. The session can be viewed here.

2021 EEA-ESEM Virtual: WinE organised a panel and the co-chairs Tore Ellingson & Sigrid Suetens asked the panellists Marianne Bertrand, Camille Landais and Ghazala Azmat to discuss: How can we understand the gender earnings gap? Are gender differences the result of stereotypes or of hard-wired preferences? What do we know about the female penalty in academic careers? Which policies are successful in reducing gender gaps?

2022 EEA-ESEM Milan: To celebrate a return to in-person meetings, the WinE Committee organised a special contributed session on Gender. The session was followed by networking lunch organised with the AXA Research Lab on Gender Equality, Dondena, Bocconi.

2023 EEA-ESEM Barcelona: WinE Committee members Jose De-Sousa and Jakob Egholt Søgaard organised an insightful panel discussion exploring the challenges and opportunities faced by women in academia at various career stages, from PhD to postdoc, assistant professor, and tenure. The 3 speakers - Cecilia Garcia-Peñalosa, Carlo Rasmus Schwarz and Natalia Zinovyeva - shared their experiences across Europe, addressing critical questions, including: What are the primary steps and determinants of promotion? How can our discipline foster greater diversity across different career stages? What are some notable differences among European countries, and what lessons can we glean from these distinctions? The idea was to try and uncover the complexities of career progression and strive towards a more inclusive and diverse academic landscape. The panel was followed by a social event for supporters of inclusion & diversity in economics.