KU professor Donna Ginther receives Carolyn Shaw Bell Award from the American Economic Association

LAWRENCE — The American Economic Association awarded the 2025 Carolyn Shaw Bell Award to Donna Ginther, Roy A. Roberts & Regents Distinguished Professor of Economics and director of the Institute for Policy & Social Research at the University of Kansas.

Commemorating the founding of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession, the Bell Award honors individuals who have furthered the status of women in economics. Ginther has a long record of research and service exploring the barriers that hamper achievement of women in economics and in STEM fields, developing interventions to test and improve mentoring for women in economics, and mentoring women at every career stage.

“I am humbled and honored to receive the Carolyn Shaw Bell Award.  I have spent my career working to make the economics profession more welcoming to all economists and especially women,” Ginther said. 

A labor economist, Ginther has researched labor markets, gender differences in employment outcomes, wage inequality, science policy and investments in children.

Ginther has pursued her goal to make economics more welcoming to all through research on career progression in economics and as a personal mentor and guide to other women economists. 

“This award is so well deserved. Wherever I go, it seems Dr. Ginther has touched the lives and careers of the women economists around me. It is exciting and heartwarming to see her recognized for both her intellectual rigor and her compassion for the next generation of women economists,” said Misty Heggeness, KU associate professor of public affairs & administration and IPSR associate research scientist.

Related research

Ginther and her collaborators have documented the effects of a randomized controlled trial testing mentoring workshops for pre-tenure female economists in academic positions. One study documented the effect of workshops in retaining women in academia and improving the rates at which they achieve tenure at top-50 ranked institutions. Ginther and co-authors found that these workshops helped women increase the number and quality of publications and successful grant applications. They also found that the mentoring workshop helped participants learn how to expand their co-author networks and boosted their career success.

These findings are especially important because of persistent barriers to achievement for women in economics. Ginther and her co-author, Shulamit Kahn, in 2004 and again in 2021, explored the rates at which women in economics achieve tenure. Their 2021 findings suggest that there is an ongoing gender gap in tenure for faculty in economics, particularly at less research-intensive institutions. 

Ginther’s work over more than 20 years helps refine understanding of where barriers might inhibit career progression and what mechanisms can help economists overcome those barriers. For example, early work on gender gaps in tenure achievement led to the adoption of stop-the-clock policies, allowing pre-tenure faculty to pause the tenure clock while focused on caregiving responsibilities such as having children.

More recently, Ginther has collaborated with a team of economists to understand and address barriers to success in the profession for women. With funding from Co-Impact, this project aims to change culture issues in economics departments and other spaces in academia, like conferences and seminars. Team members have started to understand and address longstanding issues through a survey of economics department chairs and a series of focus groups with graduate students. Programming such as peer-to-peer mentoring and a conference for chairs aims to put into practice the lessons from these studies.

Ginther’s work on mentoring is also evident in her life as a faculty member and research center director at KU. 

“Professor Donna K. Ginther has been an exceptional mentor and adviser throughout my doctoral training. Her guidance, encouragement and unwavering support have shaped my research, strengthened my professional identity and given me the confidence to grow as an independent scholar,” said Mumtahina Islam, fourth-year economics doctoral student. 

Lilly Springer, doctoral candidate in economics at KU, described Ginther as a mentor and model.

“Dr. Donna Ginther’s mentorship has been transformative for me personally and professionally. Her unwavering support of both my research and professional development has reinforced that I belong in the economics profession,” Springer said. “I cannot imagine my graduate school experience without her kindness and generosity, and I strive to follow her example as I begin the next stage of my career.”

Ginther formally accepted the 2025 Carolyn Shaw Bell Award at the 2026 American Economic Association/Allied Social Science Associations meeting in Philadelphia.