American Economic Journal:
Applied Economics
ISSN 1945-7782 (Print) | ISSN 1945-7790 (Online)
Professors in Core Science Fields Are Not Always Biased against Women: Evidence from France
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics
vol. 7,
no. 4, October 2015
(pp. 53–75)
Abstract
We investigate the link between how male-dominated a field is, and gender bias against women in this field. Taking the entrance exam of a French higher education institution as a natural experiment, we find that evaluation is actually biased in favor of females in more male-dominated subjects (e.g., math, philosophy) and in favor of males in more female-dominated subjects (e.g., literature, biology), inducing a rebalancing of gender ratios between students recruited for research careers in science and humanities majors. Evaluation bias is identified from systematic variations across subjects in the gap between students' nonanonymous oral and anonymous written test scores. (JEL I23, J16, J71)Citation
Breda, Thomas, and Son Thierry Ly. 2015. "Professors in Core Science Fields Are Not Always Biased against Women: Evidence from France." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 7 (4): 53–75. DOI: 10.1257/app.20140022Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- I23 Higher Education; Research Institutions
- J16 Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
- J71 Labor Discrimination
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