Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of “Blind” Auditions on Female Musicians

Abstract

A change in the audition procedures of symphony orchestras—adoption of “blind” auditions with a “screen” to conceal the candidate's identity from the jury—provides a test for sex-biased hiring. Using data from actual auditions, in an individual fixed-effects framework, we find that the screen increases the probability a woman will be advanced and hired. Although some of our estimates have large standard errors and there is one persistent effect in the opposite direction, the weight of the evidence suggests that the blind audition procedure fostered impartiality in hiring and increased the proportion women in symphony orchestras. (JEL J7, J16)

The relationship between reflective rumination and musical ability.

“…Alternatively, reflective rumination may have been related to visual aspeets of the performer/performance that can influence ratings of musieal ability (e.g., Goldin & Rouse, 2000). For example, partieipants high in refleetive rumination may have seemed more "natural" in their performanee, leading to higher evaluations (Tsay & Banaji, 2011).…”

Often biased but rarely in doubt: How initial reactions to stigmatized applicants affect interviewer confidence

“…More specifically, we draw a curtain across the interview table, a manipulation that was inspired by the long-standing tradition of blind auditions in the music industry (Goldin & Rouse, 2000). When the experimenter and applicant entered the interview room, the applicant was seated on the chair opposite to the interviewer (either visible to the interviewer or nonvisible due to the curtain in between the applicant and the interviewer).…”

Γυναίκες Και Καλλιτεχνική Εργασία. Ένα Εμβληματικό Παράδειγμα Για Τις Σπουδές Φύλου

“…Wo�en in �rti�tic �or��: fi�e �rinci��e e����n�tion� E ven if still relatively neglected, research on women in artistic fields has boomed in recent years in various domains: Painting (Bozello, 2000;Lang and Lang K., 2001;Pasquier, 1983;Trasforini, 2006); rock music (Tripier, 1998;Ortiz, 2004), «popular» music (Whiteley, 1997), dance (Faure, 2004;Sorignet, 2004), jazz singers (Buscatto, 2003), literature (Naudier, 2000;Saint Martin de, 1990), classical music (Escal and Rousseau-Dujardin, 1999;Goldin and Rouse, 2000;Graber, 2004;Ravet, 2003) or film writing (Bielby and Bielby, 1996).…”

“…Two economists, Goldin and Rouse, have shown how such discrimination takes place in the recruitment of classical musicians for American orchestras (Goldin and Rouse, 2000). After having reconstructed recruitment figures, they compared the recruitment results from the main American orchestras before and after the systematic use of a folding screen in the recruitment of musicians.…”