Teaching Accreditation Exams Reveal Grading Biases Favor Women in Male-Dominated Disciplines in France

Thomas Breda () and Melina Hillion ()
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Melina Hillion: Paris School of Economics

No 10079, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Discrimination against women is seen as one of the possible causes behind their underrepresentation in certain STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) subjects. We show that this is not the case at the competitive exams used to recruit almost all French secondary and postsecondary teachers and professors. Comparisons of oral non gender-blind tests with written gender-blind tests for about 100,000 individuals observed in 11 different fields over the period 2006-2013 reveal a bias in favor of women that is strongly increasing with the extent of a field's male-domination. This bias turns from 3 to 5 percentile ranks for men in literature and foreign languages to about 10 percentile ranks for women in math, physics or philosophy. These findings have implications for the debate over what interventions are appropriate to increase the representation of women in fields in which they are currently underrepresented.

Keywords: gender gap in science; natural experiment; gender stereotypes; evaluation bias; discrimination; preference for opposite gender (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 66 pages
Date: 2016-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse and nep-eur
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Published - published in: Science Magazine, 2016, 353 (6298), 474 - 478

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Related works:
Working Paper: Teaching accreditation exams reveal grading biases favor women in male-dominated disciplines in France (2016)
Working Paper: Teaching accreditation exams reveal grading biases favor women in male-dominated disciplines in France (2016)
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