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

Abstract

This paper studies whether the gender composition of recruiting committees matters. We make use of the exceptional evidence provided by Spanish public examinations, where the allocation of candidates to evaluating committees is random. We analyze how the chances of success of 150,000 female and male candidates to the four main Corps of the Spanish Judiciary over 1987-2006 were affected by the gender of their evaluators. We find that a female (male) candidate is significantly less likely to pass the exam whenever she 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.

Keywords: gender discrimination, randomized experiment, public examinations

JEL Classification: J71, J78