When the Shadow Is the Substance: Judge Gender and the Outcomes of Workplace Sex Discrimination Cases

Matthew Knepper ()

Journal of Labor Economics, 2018, vol. 36, issue 3, 623 - 664

Abstract: The number of workplace sex discrimination charges filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission approaches 25,000 annually. Do the subsequent judicial proceedings suffer from a discriminatory gender bias? Exploiting random assignment of federal district court judges to civil cases, I find that female plaintiffs filing workplace sex discrimination claims are substantially more likely to settle and win compensation whenever a female judge is assigned to the case. Additionally, female judges are 15 percentage points less likely than male judges to grant motions filed by defendants, which suggests that final negotiations are shaped by the emergence of the bias.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/696150 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/696150 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jlabec:doi:10.1086/696150

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Labor Economics from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().