It is hard to see that the RAE as constituted assists women whose work might be thought to be a target for discrimination. To help there, the RAE would have to assign 4s, 5s and so on to each department member. This would be brutal, but there is something to be said for it. My view is that such an RAE would be best done every ten years and would require every person to enter only one or two publications each decade.
Andrew Oswald Professor of economics University of Warwick