Anticipated Gender Discrimination and Grade Disclosure

Louis-Pierre Lepage, Xiaomeng Li and Basit Zafar

No 30765, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We study a unique grading policy at a large US public university allowing students to mask their letter grades into a “Pass”, after having observed their original grade. Using administrative transcript records, we find that female students are substantially less likely to mask their grades than male students, even after accounting for differences in grades, GPA, and course/major taking. We present a framework showing how anticipated discrimination in the labor market can distort incentives to mask across gender. Consistent with the framework, a survey reveals that students anticipate that female students, particularly in STEM, Business, and Economics, will face labor market discrimination which makes them less likely to mask. Our survey allows us to distinguish between anticipated discrimination and other explanations which could contribute to the masking gap, such as preferences for risk or transparency. We find that anticipated discrimination can explain a sizable fraction of the gender gap in masking.

JEL-codes: D8 I23 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen and nep-lab
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