BusinessDay 13 April 2018

A2 BUSINESS DAY
C002D5556 Friday 13 April 2018
FT
Chemical weapons agency
backs UK findings...
NATIONAL
US futures tip higher open for Wall Street
PETER WELLS
US stocks look set to follow
European peers higher at
the open on Thursday as
investors continue to assess the
potential for conflict between the
US and Russia over the weekend’s
alleged chemical weapons attack
Continued from page A1
made available to 192 state parties,
including Russia.
The OPCW said the toxic chemical
“was of high purity” — lending credence
to the UK’s argument that only
a state with a sophisticated laboratory
could realistically have deployed the
chemical.
In response, the Russian government
repeated its assertion that
Moscow had neither produced nor
stored any chemical weapons, except
those reported to the OPCW and subsequently
destroyed under the body’s
supervision.
Georgy Kalamanov, Russia’s deputy
minister of trade and industry,
told Interfax: “Russia did not produce
any poisonous substances other than
those that were reported by Russia under
the Convention for the Prohibition
of Chemical Weapons in 1997. Therefore
there are none in the stocks.”
Moscow asked to be part of the
OPCW’s investigation, but lost a vote
among member states last week.
Moscow also seized on comments
last week by the head of Porton Down,
Britain’s military laboratory, who said
his team had not identified the precise
source of the novichok used in the
Salisbury attack.
The British government responded
that its tracing was based on
intelligence showing that Russia has
produced novichok in the past decade
and experimented with its use for assassination.
A key member of the Soviet research
team that developed novichok
in the 1970s and 1980s has also sided
with the British government in its
dispute with Moscow. Vladimir Uglev
said he was sure the compound used
was one of those his team had first developed
in 1975, but cautioned that it
would be impossible to prove beyond
doubt where the Salisbury nerve agent
had originated.
The survival of the Skripals has
been used to raise doubts about
whether novichok could have been
used in the poisoning. However, experts
have said that the effect of the
nerve agent would have depended
on how they came into contact with
it and in what form.
The OPCW said it took “blood
samples from the three affected
individuals”, conducted “on-site sampling
of environmental samples” at
places where the chemical might
have remained, and received splits
of samples taken by the British authorities.
It was also briefed by the UK
government.
Following the publication of the
OPCW report on Thursday, Boris
Johnson, UK foreign secretary, said:
“There can be no doubt what was used
and there remains no alternative explanation
about who was responsible
— only Russia has the means, motive
and record.”
“We will now work tirelessly with
our partners to help stamp out the grotesque
use of weapons of this kind and
we have called a session of the OPCW
executive council next Wednesday to
discuss next steps,” he added. “The
Kremlin must give answers.”
in Syria.
Futures for the S&P 500 are up
0.5 per cent, while those for the
Dow Jones Industrial Average and
Nasdaq 100 are 0.6 per cent higher.
Treasuries have retreated
slightly alongside the slightlyimproved
sentiment in markets,
with the yield on the benchmark
10-year US Treasury up 0.5 basis
points to 2.7954 per cent. Yields
move in the opposite direction to
bond prices.
Investors have been weighing
the potential impact should the
US proceed with a military strike
on Syria after an alleged chemical
weapons attack took place near
Damascus on the weekend.
Day-to-day reactions by investors
have varied this week, but Wall
Street spent most of Wednesday
in the red after Donald Trump’s
warning to Russia, which supports
Syria’s government, to “get ready”
for a military strike on the Middle
Eastern country heightened the
St Marylebone sixth formers (from left) Bryony Jones, Sophia Hood-Sargent, Kawthar Msrar, Zaira Khanzada and
Emily Lee-Williams © Charlie Bibby/FT
Where are all the female economists?
Few women reach senior positions — and the root of the problem lies in education
GEMMA TETLOW
Economics affects everyone and
people need to know more
about it, says 18-year-old Emily
Lee-Williams, who is studying the
subject at St Marylebone, an inner-
London state school. “But it seems
quite intimidating in the media. . . If
you think of an economist, you think
of a rich man in a business suit who
is so much higher up than you are.”
Many in the profession are worried
that too few women work in economics
at senior level. But only recently
has the source of much of the problem
been identified: women are far less
likely than men to study economics,
let alone pursue a career in it.
Just over a third of undergraduate
economics students in the UK are
women (overall, 57 per cent of undergraduates
are women). The picture is
similar in Australia and the US.
“My initial thinking was that for
some reason female economists
were out there but not applying to the
Government Economic Service,” said
Osama Rahman, who jointly leads
a team trying to boost the number
of women among the ranks of UK
civil service economists. “It was only
later I realised there was a problem
with women not choosing to study
economics.”
The subject was once at the forefront
of women’s educational emancipation.
The first coeducational university
lecture in the UK was conducted
by a professor of political economy
at University College London in 1871.
But, while other traditionally male
subjects such as engineering have
made progress in attracting women,
economics has struggled.
Image problem
One explanation frequently given
for why so few women study economics
is that the mathematical nature of
the subject puts them off. This does
not stand up to scrutiny, as the share
of women among maths undergraduates
exceeds that in economics.
But economics does have an image
problem. Kawthar Msrar at St
Marylebone school says: “It is still
seen as a very male-oriented job;
there is not a widespread realisation
yet that girls can do it, too.” Her
classmate Bryony Jones agrees: “As a
mixed race woman, I don’t see anyone
who looks like me doing economics.”
Elinor Ostrom (1933-2012) remains
the only woman to have been
awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Rachel Griffith, professor of economics
at Manchester University, will
next year become only the second female
president of the Royal Economic
Society since its creation in 1890. The
American Economic Association has
gone only one better during its 133-
year history.
Another issue is the mistaken
belief that economics is about money
and forecasting. Claudia Goldin, a
professor of economics at Harvard,
plays the “Uber game”: “take an Uber,
tell the driver you’re an economist,
and nine times out of 10 they will ask
you to predict the economy or the
stock market.”
In fact, economists work in a
wide range of areas, from designing
policies to improve child nutrition
to examining the balance of power
between employers and employees
and the rise of “deaths of despair”
among white working-class Americans.
Economic practice — focusing
on social policy issues — is another
little-known field.
The Australian, UK and US central
banks have campaigns to encourage
women to take up economics. And
having just missed its targets for
increasing the number of women in
management positions, the European
Central Bank is thinking about how
it can encourage women to study the
subject.
In the UK, economics graduates
rank second — behind graduates
in medicine — in average earnings,
according to data from the Institute
for Fiscal Studies. Female economics
graduates earned on average £20,000
more a year a decade after graduation
than creative arts graduates. But
typically, women place less weight
than men on financial return when
choosing which subject to study.
Economics majors were also more
likely than those in any other subject
to head an S&P500 company. Differences
in career choice are an important
factor driving the gender pay gap.
Economists are influential in
public policymaking, from setting
monetary policy to designing systems
to allocate donor organs. Here, “the
under-representation of women matters
because it affects what questions
economists look at”, says Sarah Smith,
a professor of economics at Bristol
university and chair of the RES’s
women’s committee. “Ultimately it
affects the advice given on public
policy issues.”
There is no single explanation for
the under-representation of women
in economics. “Social norms that go
back a long time may dictate who
studies what,” says Homa Zarghamee
of Barnard College in New York.
Even when economics undergraduates
do not pursue a career
in the field, an understanding of
the basics has benefits. “Everyone
should be able to pick up and read a
great newspaper,” says Prof Goldin.
“If one of the goals of education is
to be able to read and understand
what’s in it and to be able to question
economics critically, taking an
elementary course in economics is
extremely important.”
That has been the experience of
17-year-old Zaira Khanzada at St
Marylebone school. “Since I was young,
I would watch BBC News with my dad,
and there would be so many things I
did not understand,” says Ms Khanzada.
“But studying economics has really
helped; everything has clicked.”
What works
Many campaigns have sprung
up to try to encourage women to
study economics. Prof Goldin is
co-ordinating a series of experiments
across 20 US universities and
colleges, including mentoring and
improving knowledge of career paths
for economists.
tension.
This morning, the US president
tweeted he “never said when an
attack on Syria would take place”
adding it “could be very soon or
not at all!”
Germany’s Dax was up 0.7 per
cent in afternoon trade, while London’s
FTSE 100 was trading flat.
Macron says
there is proof
chemicals used in
Douma attack
French president waits for more information
before deciding on launching strikes
ANNE-SYLVAINE CHASSANY,
KATHRIN HILLE AND
REBECCA COLLARD
Emmanuel Macron said that
France has proof that chemical
weapons were used by the
Syrian regime in an attack on a rebel
holdout near Damascus that has
triggered threats of western military
action against the Arab state.
But the French president added
that Paris would only decide whether
to launch strikes against Syria when
it had received more information.
“We will make decisions in due
time,” Mr Macron said in an interview
with French television on
Thursday.
Both France and the UK have
suggested that they are poised to
support any military action taken by
the US in response to the suspected
gas attack in Douma, which killed
more than 40 people. On Thursday,
the UK will hold an emergency
cabinet meeting to formulate its
response.
Donald Trump on Wednesday
warned Russia, which intervened
militarily in the Syrian conflict to
back President Bashar al-Assad, to
“get ready” for a missile attack. At the
start of the week, the US president
said he would make a decision on
whether to take military action in
24 to 48 hours.
But on Thursday, Mr Trump appeared
to backtrack on the timing
of any attack. “Never said when an
attack on Syria would take place.
Could be very soon or not so soon
at all!” he said in a tweet.
Mr Macron, who has had at least
two telephone conversations with
Mr Trump since the attack in Douma
on Saturday, has previously said that
the use of chemical weapons would
be a “red line” that would prompt an
“immediate response from France”.
He said on Thursday that he would
do everything to “avoid military
escalation in the region”.
The prospect of western military
action in Syria had raised concerns
about the risk of a direct confrontation
between Russia and the US. But
the Kremlin said on Thursday that a
hotline set up with the US to avoid
accidental clashes over Syria was
still active despite the rising tension.
Dmitry Peskov, president Vladimir
Putin’s spokesman, told reporters
that the so-called de-confliction
mechanism was “being used by
both sides”. Mr Peskov reiterated an
appeal to the US to “avoid any steps
that could lead to increased tension
in Syria”.
“We believe that this would have
an extremely destructive effect on
the entire Syrian settlement process,”
he said.