Gender Inequalities in Academia: Biases in Hiring or Promotion?

Given a relatively equal share of women and men at the PhD level, there is a dramatic decrease of women’s representation in higher stages of academic career (European Commission 2015). In this project, we study whether and how the demand-side processes contribute to this decrease by examining two forms of possible gender bias in academia: direct bias in screening processes through selectors’ decisions and indirect bias through reliance on networks that may operate differently for men and women. We test these mechanisms through a factorial survey experiment on two types of professional engagement: entrance into assistant professorships and internal promotion to full professorship