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Working Paper
Cultural Change Through Writing Style: Gendered Pronoun Use in the Economics Profession
Through their writing, people often reflect their values. Since the 1970s, academic economists have gradually changed their third-person pronoun choices, from using the masculine form to incorporating feminine and plural forms. We document this transition empirically, and examine the role of social interactions among economists in driving the cultural change reflected in these choices. Our analysis relies on a model where writing style depends on the influence of academic peers, the implicit negotiation between co-authors, and individual authors’ preferences for expressing gender equality ...