Gendered Honors: Graduation Committees, Academic Distinction, and Early-Career Outcomes

Lorenzo Cappellari, Tommaso Colussi and Marco Ovidi

No 26194, RFBerlin Discussion Paper Series from ROCKWOOL Foundation Berlin (RFBerlin)

Abstract: We study how committee dynamics affect the recognition of academic excellence and its consequences in the labour market. Using administrative records from a major Italian university and exploiting exogenous variation in the gender composition of graduation committees, we show that equally prepared female graduates are significantly less likely to receive laude honors when evaluated by male-majority committees, while males are unaffected. The effect is concentrated among students advised by female or early-career faculty and disappears when a woman chairs the committee, pointing to the role of authority and influence in deliberations. We show pre-defense gender gaps in adivsors' official laude requests in male-majority committees, consistent with nominations responding to expected committee support. Gaps in academic distinction translate into meaningful entry-wage penalties, contributing to gender gaps at labor-market entry.

Keywords: Gender bias; academic evaluation; labor market outcomes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 J16 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-07
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.rfberlin.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/26194.pdf (application/pdf)

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:crm:wpaper:26194

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in RFBerlin Discussion Paper Series from ROCKWOOL Foundation Berlin (RFBerlin) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Moritz Lubczyk () and Matthew Nibloe ().