Séminaire interne du LERN – Jeudi 21 mai à 12h
Jeudi prochain (le 21 mai 2026), nous aurons le plaisir d’écouter Audrey Etienne (LERN, Université de Rouen) qui présentera son papier « Orchestrating Equality of Opportunities: Sex segregation and gender bias in decision-making », co-écrit avec Reguina Hatzipetrou-Andronikou (Nantes Université), Maxime Parodi (OFCE Sciences Po), Hélène Périvier (OFCE Sciences Po) et Hyacinthe Ravet (IReMus, Sorbonne Université).
Abstract:
We study whether gender stereotypes shape jury decisions in French orchestra auditions, using an original dataset of recruitment competitions collected from permanent French orchestras. The high degree of sex segregation across instruments and the variation in screen (blind audition) policies provide an informative setting to test this hypothesis. Our main design exploits a triple interaction between candidate gender, screen condition, and instrument feminization. A complementary within-competition difference-in-differences, using always-blind competitions as controls, confirms the result. Both designs converge: removing the screen penalizes musicians whose gender is underrepresented in their instrument, and this penalty increases with sex segregation. The effect is approximately symmetric across genders and at least as large among top candidates, consistent with stereotype-driven evaluator bias. We also document a survivor effect: in blind auditions, gender minorities outperform the majority, consistent with positive selection during training. For instruments where women represent less than 25% of musicians, the penalty exceeds 6 percentage points on women’s advancement probability.