Gender Representation and Collective Decision-Making in Expert Committees

Abstract

This paper studies how gender representation affects collective decision-making in expert committees. I exploit quasi-random assignment of judges to panels in the Greek Supreme Court using newly digitized data on 3,700 criminal appeals. I find that panels assigned more female judges are more likely to reject appeals and less likely to delegate cases. Effects are nonlinear and emerge primarily when women constitute a majority of the committee. The mechanism appears to operate at the panel rather than the individual level—panels with a higher share of female judges take significantly longer to decide, especially in complex cases and in familiar panel compositions, consistent with more thorough deliberation rather than coordination costs. These findings suggest that the effects of gender representation depend on whether representation meaningfully alters the deliberative composition of the group.

Keywords: panel decisions, gender composition, quasi-random assignment, Supreme Court