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Do Masculine Names Help Female Lawyers Become Judges? Evidence from South Carolina

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  • Bentley Coffey
  • Patrick A. McLaughlin

Abstract

This paper provides the first empirical test of the Portia Hypothesis: Females with masculine monikers are more successful in legal careers. Utilizing South Carolina microdata, we look for correlation between an individual's advancement to a judgeship and his-her name's masculinity, which we construct from the joint empirical distribution of names and gender in the state's entire population of registered voters. We find robust evidence that nominally masculine females are favored over other females. Hence, our results support the Portia Hypothesis. Copyright 2009, Oxford University Press.

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  • Bentley Coffey & Patrick A. McLaughlin, 2009. "Do Masculine Names Help Female Lawyers Become Judges? Evidence from South Carolina," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 11(1), pages 112-133.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:amlawe:v:11:y:2009:i:1:p:112-133
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/aler/ahp008
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    Cited by:

    1. Moon, Sue H. & Zhou, Mingming & Zhu, Yun, 2023. "What’s in a name? Leaders’ names, compensation, and firm performance," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    2. Huang, Yana & Wang, Tianyu, 2022. "MULAN in the name: Causes and consequences of gendered Chinese names," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    3. Coffey Bentley & McLaughlin Patrick A., 2016. "The Effect on Lawyers Income of Gender Information Contained in First Names," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 57-76, March.

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