The subheading is clearly a nonsense feel-good trope like "diversity is our strength." "Everyone suffers"? That clearly depends on who is speaking and with regard to what are held to be the important goals. Some may suffer a lot, some not all, and some only a bit. It is a worthwhile question to explore and quantify but in terms of a self-evident truth, there is no substance there.
Lowery writes of a perceived "pervasive and persistent sexual harassment and gender-based discrimination" within the discipline. She writes well and somewhat rhetorically persuasively. But only somewhat.
Here is a woman in the richest country in the world, at the top of both mainstream media and academia, in a country with quite stringent laws against discrimination and sexual harassment, alleging a pervasive misogyny. Given her ideological orientation, it is not just a crisis of sexual bias but racial bias. The problem is white men.
Ultimately the field is tilted to the worldview of the white men who dominate it.
Given the high standing of black economists such as Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and Glenn Loury, perhaps Lowrey's views are constrained by only being familiar with left leaning academics.
Lowery's essay seems to substantially depend on the views of a single economist, Betsey Stevenson. Stevenson's opinions open and close the essay. The meat of the argument is around the purported experiences of two anonymous female economists. There is no analytic rigor or data to support Lowery's position.
Just how common is the experience being described? How many sexual harassment cases (from either sex) are brought each year? How prevalent are these in economics versus other academic disciplines? How prevalent are these cases in academia compared to other sectors, other countries? What are the appropriate measures of discrimination, sexual or otherwise? None of this is addressed in the article.
Writing well about a couple of anonymous stories is no real argument at all. If the allegations are real, they should be treated seriously but Lowery does not treat it seriously at all. She passes off idle storytelling as serious argument-making, devaluing the topic.
The epistemic mystery is just how much weight to place on Lowery's argument? It is narrowly sourced, anonymously sourced, and there is a clear ideological drift to it. How close is it to painting any sort of reality?
I am quite comfortable believing that academia is pervaded by status seeking, bullying authoritarians unwilling to accommodate those with alternative views and comfortable preying upon the professionally vulnerable. A mere passing familiarity with the entire PhD process and the indentured servitude of associate professors suggests that this is a system open to abuse.
Is there such abuse? And to what degree is the sexual abuse that does exist a function of misogyny or a product of a hierarchical authoritarian system characterized by low epistemic diversity?
I don't know and Lowery doesn't even attempt to make the case. And I wish she, or others, would. If it is as bad as alleged, it really needs a root and branch reform.
But if this is mere ideological special pleading then . . . well, it's a waste of time to even engage.
Her essay reminds me of a somewhat nominally similar piece from The Atlantic many years ago, Why Women Still Can’t Have It All by Anne-Marie Slaughter. The subheading was It’s time to stop fooling ourselves, says a woman who left a position of power: the women who have managed to be both mothers and top professionals are superhuman, rich, or self-employed. If we truly believe in equal opportunity for all women, here’s what has to change.
It had the same note of special pleading on behalf of members of the most privileged class of people to have ever existed.
In Slaughter's case, the solution was to abandon the competitive market system and switch to a government system designed to make the lives of women in academia and an interest in politics easier. A laughable solution but one with a devoted and vocal following.
Maybe Lowery's claims are true and if so they, there should indeed be reforms to make the life of the professoriate easier and safer, more open and less authoritarian (but if you are on the left, beware what you are asking for.)
But I would have a far greater receptiveness to Lowery's argument if it were not so ideologically and class self-serving. Whatever the horrors of misogyny and sexual harassment might be in academia, I can guarantee that it is worse by several factors in some other sectors. Focus on the women at the bottom of the economic pyramid who have little voice, few allies and no leverage. If you are concerned about harassment and misogyny, fix it for those victims. By focusing on the already successful and privileged, the moral argument loses salience.
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