Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/51968 
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 5537
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Several countries have recently introduced gender quotas in hiring and promotion committees at universities. This paper studies whether these policies increase the presence of women in top academic positions. The identification strategy exploits the random assignment mechanism in place between 2002 and 2006 in all academic disciplines in Spain to select the members of promotion committees. We find that a larger proportion of female evaluators increases the chances of success of female applicants to full professor positions. The magnitude of the effect is large: each additional woman on a committee composed of seven members increases the number of women promoted to full professor by 14%. Conversely, when committee members decide on promotions to associate professor positions, we do not observe any significant interaction between the gender of evaluators and the gender of candidates. If anything, in this case a larger share of female evaluators is associated with fewer successful female applicants. The evidence is consistent with the existence of ambivalent sexism.
Subjects: 
academic promotion
gender discrimination
randomized natural experiment
JEL: 
J71
J45
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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