Orchestrating Equality of Opportunities: Sex segregation and gender bias in decision-making

Inspired by the seminal paper of Goldin and Rouse (2000), we also use data from actual auditions for French orchestras to identify gender bias in jury decisions. The high degree of sex segregation among instruments and the heterogeneity of orchestras auditions provide a context for assessing the role of gender stereotypes in decision-making. We compare the decisions made in blind auditions to those made in nonblind auditions, for female and male musicians and for different levels of sex segregation by instrument. Using a triple differences design, we estimate a mixed-effects logistic model to account for the clustering structure of the data. When a screen is used to hide the candidates, a woman (a man) is more likely to be selected for male (female) instruments than a man (a woman). Conversely, when the jury sees the candidates perform, they tend to select musicians whose gender is in the majority among the instrumentalists. By comparing the probability of success for women or men in blind and nonblind auditions, we show that the sex segregation of instruments impairs the impartiality of judges and prevents them from selecting the best musician.