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The Cost of a Vowel: How the Gender-marked Job Title Affects Ratings of Female Lawyers

Author

Listed:
  • Sergiu Burlacu
  • Dominique Cappelletti
  • Sonia Marzadro
  • Alessandro Tondini

Abstract

Through a vignette study in Italian, we show that using the feminine job title negatively impacts how female lawyers are perceived by other professionals. 227 respondents were presented with hypothetical legal issues and shown several realistic profiles of male and female lawyers, with varying professional characteristics, and then asked to indicate how likely they would be to contact each of the given profiles for assistance with the legal issue. We randomly varied whether all the profiles of female lawyers for a given respondent were presented with the predominantly used masculine term - avvocato - or with the feminine term - avvocata. We find that, ceteris paribus, female profiles with the feminine term get lower scores by 0.36 (out of 10, -5%, -0.16SD). The downgrade is stronger among women respondents. The magnitude of the effect is large relative to the effect of other characteristics varied randomly in the profiles, such as work experience or other quality signals.

Suggested Citation

  • Sergiu Burlacu & Dominique Cappelletti & Sonia Marzadro & Alessandro Tondini, 2023. "The Cost of a Vowel: How the Gender-marked Job Title Affects Ratings of Female Lawyers," FBK-IRVAPP Working Papers 2023-06, Research Institute for the Evaluation of Public Policies (IRVAPP), Bruno Kessler Foundation.
    • Handle: RePEc:fbk:wpaper:2023-06
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. van der Velde, Lucas & Tyrowicz, Joanna & Siwinska, Joanna, 2015. "Language and (the estimates of) the gender wage gap," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 165-170.
    2. Davis, Lewis & Reynolds, Megan, 2018. "Gendered language and the educational gender gap," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 46-48.
    3. Bertrand, Jérémie & Osei-Tutu, Francis & Weill, Laurent, 2022. "Language gender-marking and borrower discouragement," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 212(C).
    4. Lucia Del Carpio & Thomas Fujiwara, 2023. "Do Gender-Neutral Job Ads Promote Diversity? Experimental Evidence from Latin America’s Tech Sector," NBER Working Papers 31314, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    gender language; gender markedness; job titles; vignette study;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • J44 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Professional Labor Markets and Occupations

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