will gender parity break the glass ceiling? evidence from a randomized experiment preliminary
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Will Gender Parity Break the Glass Ceiling? Evidence from a Randomized Experiment Preliminary. Manuel F. Bagüés & Berta Esteve-Volart (Universidad Carlos III) (York University). Motivation. Gender parity or gender quotas imposed or considered in many countries - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Will Gender Parity Break the Glass Ceiling? Evidence from a Randomized
Experiment
Preliminary
Manuel F. Bagüés & Berta Esteve-Volart
(Universidad Carlos III) (York University)
Motivation• Gender parity or gender quotas imposed
or considered in many countries– France: electoral party lists– Norway: public enterprises’ boards– Spain: cabinet, considering all public sector
recruitment committees (legislation project approved by Government in March 8)
• No previous evidence of gender quota effectiveness
• We use data on public exams in Spain
Why?• Few women in top positions
– Politics: women occupy at least 30% parliamentary seats in 12 out of 179 countries
– Boards of large private companies: women are 2% in Spain, 3% in Italy, 4% in France
• Policy: from equal opportunities to gender parity– The failure of the pipeline theory
How?
• Directly: women hire more women
• Indirectly:
- Role model transmission
- Women in top positions can choose policy more adequate for women,
- Private sector: flexible working hours- Politics: public expenditure more useful to
women (Duflo and Chattopadhyay 2004)
Will it work?
Empirical evidence• Data on individual productivity
– General: evidence of wage gap (Blau & Kahn 1994)– Top management: Bertrand & Hallock (1999)– Researchers: CSIC (2003), Veugelers (2006), Long
(1993), Mairesse & Turner (2002)
• Data on firm productivity (Wolfers 2006)• Experimental data
– Blind Evaluation vs Non-Blind Evaluation• Blank (1990), Goldin & Rouse (2000), Lavy (2005)
– Randomization• Lab Experiments (Gneezy et al 2003)
Background Information
• We use data from public examinations in Spain• They determine the access to public positions
(judiciary, diplomacy, notaries, economists, tax inspectors, and many others)
• Every year 175,000 young university graduates take public exams
• Only a small number of candidates pass exams• Elite formation: many political figures had to
pass public exam (e.g. Aznar)
Characteristics of public exams
• Each committee examines 500 candidates• Random allocation of candidates to
evaluating committees• Evaluation
– Oral– Two or three stages, all qualifying– Voting by majority basis– Multiple choice test introduced in 2003 for
some exams
Data
• All results are published in the state official bulletin (BOE)
• We examine public exams to the judiciary, years 1995-2004 (new data: 1985-2005)
• Type of exams: judge, prosecutor, court secretary• 150 committees• 75,000 candidates involved• About 1,700 judges, prosecutors and court
secretaries recruited
Data: what do we know?
• Characteristics of evaluators– Gender, age, age of entry, rank
• Characteristics of successful candidates for all years– Gender, age, age of entry, rank
• Characteristics of all candidates for 2003 and 2004
• We do NOT know the individual vote of each committee member
Empirical strategy
1) Committee-level information:
where y is an outcome variable, s is female share in committee, X are committee characteristics
cetetcetcetcet Xsy
Interpretation
1. Female evaluators are tougher with female candidates
2. Male evaluators are more generous with female candidates
• Possible non-linearities?
2) Candidate-level information for years 2003 and 2004 (multiple choice test):
Quantitatively
• A female candidate’s chances to pass the public exam are 5.5% greater if evaluated by a committee with fewer women than the median committee, than if evaluated by a committee with more women that the median committee
Caveats• What is the motivation of the evaluators?
1) Evaluators have ‘irrational taste’
2) Evaluators behave according to rational choice but:- Women think women are worse (lack of
confidence) - Since the men in committees discriminated in the
past, men in committees now are more generous with female candidates (past discrimination)
- Women want to increase their group’s average quality (statistical discrimination)
Next step
• Evolution over time of the observed gender bias
– What happened since the first committee with a female member?
• Data before 1995