Daniya Naidu Parama Sarathy Naidu 44541851

Does the Gender Composition of Scientific Committees Matter?

The underrepresentation of women is a major concern all around the world especially among the
universities and the policy maker. This can be due to the insufficient women in the top position as the
share of women for recruitment still remain low even after decades. Thus through this paper we
determine the problem of whether the presence of female in the committee could increase the benefit
to women candidate

Pipeline theory explained that once women entered into the academic career it is just a matter of time
for women to moved up their way to reach high position job. However, even after decade women are
still contain low share in the committee. Few researcher remarks that the existence of discrimination
of gender for the competitive environment (Niederle and Vesterlund 2007; Buser, Niederle and
Oosterbeek 2014) or the capability in bargaining could be the source of low application of women for
a promotion (Bosquet, Combes and Garcia Pen ã losa 2013; De Paola, Ponzo and Scoppa 2015) .

On the demand side, lack of female evaluator in the committee result a slow progress in deciding on
hiring and promotion. Thus in order to examine whether existence of women in the committee could
improve the success of female candidate, there are few hypothesis need to be consider which is there
is an evidence that men and women segregated across distinct subfield (Dolado, Felgueroso and
Almunia 2012, Hale and Regev 2014) , research network need to be gendered (Boschini and Sjo ̈gren
2007, Hilmer and Hilmer 2007) as committee member could be benefit from these connection, men
might have pessimistic stereotype toward women, having women in the committee improve the
quality of the evaluation.

This paper implies the use of two large scale randomized natural experiment in Spain and Italy to the
casual impact of the gender composition . Evaluators are randomly selected from a pool of qualified
professor and this give us a consistent estimate of the casual effect of the committee. Each country
provides data availability which allow us to cross validate the finding. This paper also discusses the
validity of their finding based on the theoretical argument from the previous literature. This paper
suggested that the communication within committees might aggravate the voting behavior of the
committee member.

There is no economic theory can be found related to this paper

This paper use data extracted from evaluation of the 1st edition of the Italian Abilitazione Sci-entifica
Nazionale (years 2012-2014) and Spanish Habil- itacion (years 2002-2006). In Italy there is a total of
184 academic discipline and one committee for each discipline while in Spain there is a total 174
academic discipline and 967 committees which 465 committee evaluate for the associate
professorship while the remaining evaluate the for the full professorship. The data also include
information such as the eligibility, actually selected evaluator, applicant and the final outcome.

This paper analyze the effect of the success rate of the male and female applicant with the presence of
gender composition in the committee.

First we examine the gender gap individually for the applicant using OLS method which Yie is a
dummy variable while (e)error terms indicate as the examination operate in a given field and
qualification and μe is the control for any differences that might affect the success rate.

Yie =β0 +β1Femalei +Xiβ2 +μe +εie

From the table 1, approximately half of the gender gap in both countries can be explained through the
difference in the observable characteristic however there are remaining gap are not fully captured by
the control thus this would interrupt the explanation of β1
Daniya Naidu Parama Sarathy Naidu 44541851

Next, Randomly assigned evaluator to committee to obtain the casual estimate and then estimate
using the OLS

In Italy, the percentage of female in committee has no significant impact on the success rate of the
male applicant however have a adverse impact on the success rate of female applicant. In Spain,
percentage of women evaluator has a negative effect on the success rate of female applicant while
positive effect on male applicant. Thus we cannot reject as there is insufficient evidence to prove that
effect of both countries is similar

Then, we estimate the equation using IV method which 𝐹𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑙𝑒𝑒𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑙 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐹𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑙𝑒1 ∗ 𝐹𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑙𝑒𝑒𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑙 .
The first stage result of the estimation is to show whether the instrument has a strong relationship
between the initial and final gender composition of committee. From the appendix below show that
rage of variation in gender composition between committee with minority of women and with no
Daniya Naidu Parama Sarathy Naidu 44541851

women is within the range of no significant and non-linearities.

Lastly, we estimate the quality of assessment based on the productivity of applicant who qualified in
committee with different gender composition. Using the Spanish data, there is no evidence to prove
that the quality of the candidate is related to the number of women in the evaluation committees.

Through the two large scale randomized natural experiment we could conclude that increase in the
number of women in the committee does not increase the success rate of female applicant and this is
due presence of women affect the voting behavior of the male evaluators. Besides that, the effect of
female evaluator voting for female candidate is not statically significant.

This paper concludes by attributing a comprehensive analysis of the impact of the gender composition
in the committee member. Through the randomization of the evaluator allow us to benefit from the
availability of the detailed information to analyze the explicitly of the theoretical argument.
This paper also concluded that the presence of women evaluator does not increases the success rate of
the female applicant, however in Spain having women evaluator increase success rate of women
candidate. Beside that, the estimation of Italy and Spanish are not statistically similar as there change
in the behavior of committee assessing the full professor position

This paper also suggested that gender quotas, gender segregation and connection between evaluation
and candidate can be an important factor of female committee is more likely to help female applicant.
This paper is a good reference to enhance the fairness of evaluation to female candidate
Daniya Naidu Parama Sarathy Naidu 44541851

Reference:

Boschini, Anne and Anna Sj ̈ogren (2007), “Is Team Formation Gender Neu- tral? Evidence from
Coauthorship Patterns,” Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 25(2), pp. 325-365.

Bosquet, Cl ́ement, Pierre-Philippe Combes, Cecilia Garcia-Pen ̃alosa (2013), “Gender and
Competition: Evidence from Academic Promotions in France,” CESifo Working Paper, No. 4507

Buser, Thomas, Muriel Niederle and Hessel Oosterbeek (2014), “Do Women Shy away from
Competition? Do Men Compete too Much?” Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 129(3), pp. 1409-
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De Paola, Maria, Michela Ponzo and Vincenzo Scoppa (2015), “Gender Differ- ences in Attitudes
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Dolado, Juan Jose, Florentino Felgueroso and Miguel Almunia (2012), “Are Men and Women-
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Niederle, Muriel and Lise Vesterlund (2007), “Do Women Shy Away from Compe- tition? Do Men
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Zinovyeva, Natalia and Manuel Bagues (2015), “The Role of Connections in Aca- demic
Promotions,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Vol. 7(2), pp. 264-292.