Gender In-Group Bias: Evidence from Judicial Decisions

Abstract

Does gender affect judicial decisions? If so, how and to what extent do judges give preferential treatment to plaintiffs of the same gender? Does the bias, if present, vary across cultures and institutions in developing economies? Evidence on these questions is rare. In this paper, we provide novel evidence of gender in-group bias in judicial decisions. We use a novel and naturally occurring dataset that contains around 0.72 million online transcripts of judicial decisions for divorces case and exploits the effectively random assignment of cases to judges to deal with identification. The analysis provides evidence in support of gender bias: A claim with a male plaintiff is 3.9% more likely to be accepted if it is assigned to a male judge as opposed to a female
judge. Heterogeneity analysis suggests a significantly larger bias in regions with initially higher gender discrimination and sex ratio, and there is no heterogeneity across regions with different legal development, which indicates that traditional culture and attitudes might be one determinant of the bias. The findings from this paper raise policy concerns about the fairness of trials in courts with a small proportion of female judges, especially those in developing countries and regions.

Keywords: gender, in-group bias, judicial decision, discrimination

JEL Classification: J16, J21, J18