Teaching accreditation exams reveal grading biases favor women in male-dominated disciplines in France

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E S Teaching Accreditation Exams Reveal Grading Biases 2Why are women underrepresented in most areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)? One of the most common explanations is that a hiring bias against women exists in those fields (1-4). This explanation is supported by a few older experiments (5-7), a recent one with fictitious resumes (8), and a recent lab experiment (9), suggesting that the phenomenon still prevails.However some scholars have challenged this view (10, 11) and another recent experiment with fictitious resumes finds a bias in favor of women in academic recruitment (12). Studies based on actual hiring also find that when women apply to tenure-track STEM positions, they are more likely to be hired (13-18). However, those studies do not control for applicants' quality and a frequent claim is that their results simply reflect that only the best female PhDs apply to these positions while a larger fraction of males do so (11,13). A study by one of us did partly control for applicants' quality and reported a bias in favor of women in maledominated fields (19). However, it has limited external validity since it only relies on 3,000 candidates at the French Ecole Normale Supérieure entrance exam.The present analysis is based on a natural experiment over 100,000 individuals who participate in competitive exams used to hire French primary, secondary and college/university teachers over the period 2006-2013. It has two distinct advantages over all previous studies. First, it provides large-scale real-world evidence on gender biases in evaluation-based hiring in several fields. Second, it shows that those biases against or in favor of women are strongly shaped by the actual degree of female under-representation in the field in which the evaluation takes place, partly reconciling existing studies.Carefully taking into account the extent of under-representation of women in 11 academic fields allows us to extend the analysis beyond the STEM distinction. As pointed out recently (11)(12)(19)(20), the focus on STEM versus non STEM fields can be misleading to understand female underrepresentation in academia as some STEM fields are not dominated by men (e.g. 54% of U.S. Ph.Ds. in molecular biology are women (21)) while some non-STEM fields, including humanities, are male-dominated (e.g. only 31% of U.S. PhDs. in philosophy are women (21)). A better pre...

Men, Women, and STEM: Why the Differences and What Should Be Done?

“… In teacher accreditation exams in France, examiners discriminate in favor of women in maledominated fields (and in favor of men in female-dominated ones; Breda & Hillion, 2016).…”

Are gender gaps due to evaluations of the applicant or the science? A natural experiment at a national funding agency

“…35 In assessments of potential secondary and post-secondary teachers and professors, women are favoured in maledominated fields, as are men in female-dominated fields. 36 When fictitious people are presented as women in randomised experiments, they receive higher rankings as potential science faculty than men. 37,38 This aligns with evidence from other contexts showing that high-potential women are favoured over high-potential men 39 and that, although women face discrimination at earlier stages, once women have proven themselves in a maledominated context, they are often favoured over men.…”

Girls’ comparative advantage in reading can largely explain the gender gap in math-related fields

“…STEM is however a broad group that includes fields in which women are not underrepresented, such as life science or psychology. Scholars have underlined the necessity to focus more narrowly on the STEM fields which are math intensive, such as computer science or engineering (1)(2)(3), as the underrepresentation of women in these fields remains large and has not decreased at all in most developed countries during the two past decades (3)(4)(5). For example, over the period 2004 through 2014, the share of bachelor's degrees awarded to women in engineering and computer science in the US has stagnated around 20%, while it has decreased from 46 to 43% in mathematics and statistics and from 42 to 40% in physical science (6).…”

“…This has pushed scholars to look for other explanations, such as discrimination against women in STEM, or the role of social norms and stereotypes in shaping educational choices. Evidence of direct discrimination is limited (3,14,15), and many scholars now emphasize the role of gender differences in preferences, self-concept and attitudes toward math, as well as the social processes and institutions possibly shaping these differences (see references in ref. 1).…”