Teaching Accreditation Exams Reveal Grading Biases Favor Women in Male-Dominated Disciplines in France

66 Pages Posted: 8 Aug 2016 Last revised: 16 Apr 2023

See all articles by Thomas Breda

Thomas Breda

Banque de France

Melina Hillion

Paris School of Economics (PSE)

Abstract

Discrimination against women is seen as one of the possible causes behind their underrepresentation in certain STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) subjects. We show that this is not the case at the competitive exams used to recruit almost all French secondary and postsecondary teachers and professors. Comparisons of oral non gender-blind tests with written gender-blind tests for about 100,000 individuals observed in 11 different fields over the period 2006-2013 reveal a bias in favor of women that is strongly increasing with the extent of a field's male-domination. This bias turns from 3 to 5 percentile ranks for men in literature and foreign languages to about 10 percentile ranks for women in math, physics or philosophy. These findings have implications for the debate over what interventions are appropriate to increase the representation of women in fields in which they are currently underrepresented.

Keywords: gender gap in science, natural experiment, gender stereotypes, evaluation bias, discrimination, preference for opposite gender

JEL Classification: I23, J16

Suggested Citation

Breda, Thomas and Hillion, Melina, Teaching Accreditation Exams Reveal Grading Biases Favor Women in Male-Dominated Disciplines in France. IZA Discussion Paper No. 10079, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2819360 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2819360

Thomas Breda (Contact Author)

Banque de France ( email )

Paris
France

Melina Hillion

Paris School of Economics (PSE) ( email )

48 Boulevard Jourdan
Paris, 75014 75014
France

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