Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of "Blind" Auditions on Female Musicians

Claudia Goldin and Cecilia Rouse

No 5903, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Discrimination against women has been alleged in hiring practices for many occupations, but it is extremely difficult to demonstrate sex-biased hiring. A change in the way symphony orchestras recruit musicians provides an unusual way to test for sex-biased hiring. To overcome possible biases in hiring, most orchestras revised their audition policies in the 1970s and 1980s. A major change involved the use of blind' auditions with a screen' to conceal the identity of the candidate from the jury. Female musicians in the top five symphony orchestras in the United States were less than 5% of all players in 1970 but are 25% today. We ask whether women were more likely to be advanced and/or hired with the use of blind' auditions. Using data from actual auditions in an individual fixed-effects framework, we find that the screen increases by 50% the probability a woman will be advanced out of certain preliminary rounds. The screen also enhances, by severalfold, the likelihood a female contestant will be the winner in the final round. Using data on orchestra personnel, the switch to blind' auditions can explain between 30% and 55% of the increase in the proportion female among new hires and between 25% and 46% of the increase in the percentage female in the orchestras since 1970.

JEL-codes: J2 J7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1997-01
Note: LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Published as Goldin, Claudia and Cecilia Rouse. "Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact Of 'Blind' Auditions On Female Musicians," American Economic Review, 2000, v90(4,Sep), 715-741.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w5903.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of "Blind" Auditions on Female Musicians (2000)
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:nbr:nberwo:5903

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w5903

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().