Can Gender Parity Break the Glass Ceiling? Evidence from a Repeated Randomized Experiment Articles uri icon

authors

  • BAGUES FERNANDEZ, MANUEL
  • ESTEVE VOLART, BERTA

publication date

  • October 2010

start page

  • 1301

end page

  • 1328

issue

  • 4

volume

  • 77

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 0034-6527

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1467-937X

abstract

  • This paper studies whether the gender composition of recruiting committees matters. We make use of the unique evidence provided by Spanish public examinations, where the allocation of candidates to
    evaluating committees is random. We analyse how the chances of success
    of 150,000 female and male candidates for positions in the four main
    Corps of the Spanish Judiciary from 1987 to 2007 were affected by the
    gender composition of their evaluation committee. We find that a female
    (male) candidate is significantly less likely to be hired whenever she
    (he) is randomly assigned to a committee where the share of female
    (male) evaluators is relatively greater. Evidence from multiple choice
    tests suggests that this is due to the fact that female majority
    committees overestimate the quality of male candidates.