Do Gender Quotas Pass the Test? Evidence from Academic Evaluations in Italy

This papers studies how the presence of women in academic committees affects the chances of success of male and female candidates. We use evidence from Italy, where candidates to Full and Associate Professor positions are required to qualify in a nation-wide evaluation known as Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale. This evaluation was conducted between 2012 and 2014 in 184 academic disciplines and it attracted around 70,000 applications. In each field, committee members were selected from the pool of professors that had volunteered for the task using a random lottery. We estimate the causal effect of committees' gender composition on candidates' chances of success exploiting the existence of this system of random assignment. In a five-member committee, each additional female evaluator decreases by 2 percentage points the success rate of female candidates relative to male candidates. Information from 274,000 individual evaluation reports shows that, in mixed-gender committees, male and female evaluators are equally biased against female candidates, suggesting that the presence of women in the committee affects the voting behavior of male evaluators

The Impact of Gender on the Review of the Curricula Vitae of Job Applicants and Tenure Candidates: A National Empirical Study

The purpose of this study was to determine some of the factors that influence outside reviewers and search committee members when they are reviewing curricula vitae, particularly with respect to the gender of the name on the vitae. The participants in this study were 238 male and female academic psychologists who listed a university address in the1997 Directory of the American Psychological Association. They were each sent one of four versions of a curriculum vitae (i.e., female job applicant, male job applicant, female tenure candidate, and male tenure candidate), along with a questionnaire and a self-addressed stamped envelope. All the curricula vitae actually came from a real-life scientist at two different stages in her career, but the names were changed to traditional male and female names. Although an exclusively between-groups design was used to avoid sparking gender conscious responding, the results indicate that the participants were clearly able to distinguish between the qualifications of the job applicants versus the tenure candidates, as evidenced by suggesting higher starting salaries, increased likelihood of offering the tenure candidates a job,granting them tenure, and greater respect for their teaching, research, and service records. Both men and women were more likely to vote to hire a male job applicant than a female job applicant with an identical record. Similarly, both sexes reported that the male job applicant had done adequate teaching,research, and service experience compared to the female job applicant with an identical record. In contrast,when men and women examined the highly competitive curriculum vitae of the real-life scientist who had gotten early tenure, they were equally likely to tenure the male and female tenure candidates and there was no difference in their ratings of their teaching, research, and service experience. There was no significant main effect for the quality of the institution or professional rank on selectivity in hiring and tenuring decisions. The results of this study indicate a gender bias for both men and women in preference for male job applicants

Effects of chronic naltrexone treatment in rats on place preference and locomotor activation after acute administration of cocaethylene or ethanol plus cocaine

When cocaine and ethanol are taken together a cocaine metabolite called cocaethylene is produced. Investigators have determined that cocaine, ethanol, and cocaethylene all produce a conditioned place preference when administered intraperitoneally. On the basis of the moderate success of naltrexone at attenuating the rewarding effects of ethanol and cocaine administered independently, we examined the ability of chronic naltrexone treatment (administered by means of subcutaneous implant across 6 days) to reduce the preference and motor-stimulating effects resulting from intraperitoneal administration of cocaethylene (Experiment 1) and the co-administration of ethanol with cocaine (Experiment 2) in outbred rats. Results demonstrated naltrexone modestly reduced conditioned place preference for cocaethylene but had no effect on the locomotor stimulation resulting from cocaethylene administration. Naltrexone failed to decrease the preference for the chamber paired with co-administration of ethanol and cocaine and did not change the degree of locomotor activation produced by these drugs. These results support the suggestion that naltrexone as a pharmacotherapy to treat co-abuse of ethanol and cocaine in human beings may have limited benefits. © 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

New Evidence on Gender Differences in Promotion Rates: An Empirical Analysis of a Sample of New Hires

Using a large sample of establishments drawn from the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality (MCSUI) employer survey, we study gender differences in promotion rates and in the wage gains attached to promotions. Several unique features of our data distinguish our analysis from the previous literature on this topic. First, we have information on the wage increases attached to promotions, and relatively few studies on gender differences have considered promotions and wage increases together. Second, our data include job-specific worker performance ratings, allowing us to control for performance and ability more precisely than through commonly-used skill indicators such as educational attainment or tenure. Third, in addition to standard information on occupation and industry, we have data on a number of other firm characteristics, enabling us to control for these variables while still relying on a broad, representative sample, as opposed to a single firm or a similarly narrowly-defined population. Our results indicate that women have lower probabilities of promotion and expected promotion than do men but that there is essentially no gender difference in wage growth with or without promotions

Who Becomes a Tenured Professor, and Why? Panel Data Evidence from German Sociology, 1980-2013

Prior studies that try to explain who gets tenure and why remain inconclusive, especially on whether non-meritocratic factors influence who becomes a professor. On the basis of career and publication data of virtually all sociologists working in German sociology departments, we test how meritocratic factors (academic productivity) as well as non-meritocratic factors (ascription, symbolic, and social capital) influence the chances of getting a permanent professorship in sociology. Our findings show that getting tenure in sociology largely depends on scholarly output, as previous studies have shown. Improving on existing studies, however, we show specifically that each refereed journal article and each monograph increases a sociologist’s chance for tenure by 10 to 15 percent, while other publications affect one’s likelihood for tenure only marginally and in some cases even negatively. Regarding non-meritocratic factors, we show that network size and individual reputation matter, while international experience and the reputation of one’s university do not directly affect the likelihood of tenure. Women need on average 23 to 44 percent fewer publications than men to get their first permanent position as university professor. Thus, all else being equal, they are about 1.4 times more likely to get tenure than men. The article contributes to a better understanding of the role of meritocratic and non-meritocratic factors in achieving scarce and highly competitive job positions.Bei der Frage, wer eine Professur bekommt, sind sich bisherige Studien insbesondere über den Einfluss nichtmeritokratischer Faktoren unschlüssig. Auf Basis von Lebenslauf- und Publikationsdaten fast aller an soziologischen Instituten in Deutschland beschäftigten Sozialwissenschaftlerinnen und Sozialwissenschaftlern testen wir, wie meritokratische (wissenschaftliche Produktivität) und nichtmeritokratische Faktoren (Askription, symbolisches und soziales Kapital) die Chance beeinflussen, auf eine Soziologieprofessur berufen zu werden. Es zeigt sich, dass eine Berufung vor allem von der Anzahl wissenschaftlicher Publikationen abhängt. Mit jedem referierten Zeitschriftenaufsatz und jeder Buchpublikation steigt die Chance auf eine Berufung um 10 bis 15 Prozent an, während andere Publikationsarten sie nur moderat oder sogar negativ beeinflussen. Unter den nicht-meritokratischen Faktoren zeigen sich insbesondere Netzwerkfaktoren wie auch individuelle Reputation als relevant. Internationale Erfahrung sowie das Prestige der Herkunftsinstitution weisen keine direkten Effekte auf. Frauen, so das weitere Ergebnis der Untersuchung, benötigen im Schnitt 23 bis 44 Prozent weniger Publikationen als Männer, um einen Erstruf zu erhalten. Unter sonst gleichen Faktoren liegt ihre Chance auf eine Professur um das 1,4-fache höher als die ihrer männlichen Kollegen. Insgesamt leistet die Studie einen Beitrag zur Beantwortung der Frage, wie und wie stark meritokratische und nichtmeritokratische Faktoren die Chancen auf sehr knappe, zugleich hoch kompetitive Berufspositionen beeinflussen