Consequences of Affirmative Action: The Impact of Hiring a Female Professor

This paper studies how appointing a female professor through affirmative action affects hiring decisions and gender attitudes of faculty. For identification I use the introduction of a nationwide affirmative action policy in Germany that provides subsidies to departments appointing women to permanent full professorships. Using administrative data on all academic personnel employed at German public universities, I find that exposure to a female professor increases the share of female Ph.D. students but leaves hiring of women among full professors, assistant professors, and postdoctoral researchers unaffected. The rise in female Ph.D. enrollment is driven by individuals who completed their undergraduate studies in the same department. Additional findings show that after a woman joins the department, young male faculty members increase their collaboration with female colleagues. Further, I document that research productivity and direction are unaffected by the presence of an additional woman. Finally, I estimate that approximately two-thirds of subsidized female appointments would have occurred without the program.