Do gender attitudes influence the judicial system?

Women are underrepresented at the top of the judicial system in the United States. Do gender attitudes play a role in explaining this gap?

Gender attitudes can affect the choices people make, even in high-stakes decision-making roles. Arianna Ornaghi describes her research with Elliot Ash and Daniel Chen, which analysed thousands of documents written by judges in US circuit courts to build a measure of their gender attitudes. They found that judges who more regularly associated women with family and men with career in their writings were more likely to vote conservatively in cases, more likely to overturn the decision of a female judge, and less likely to cite the opinion of a female judge.

Read the research

Elliot Ash, Daniel L. Chen and Arianna Ornaghi, Gender attitudes in the judiciary, evidence from US Circuit Courts, CAGE working paper (no.462)

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