Working Paper: NBER ID: w25759
Authors: Julian Kolev; Yuly Fuentes-Medel; Fiona Murray
Abstract: For organizations focused on scientific research and innovation, workforce diversity is a key driver of success. Blinded review is an increasingly popular approach to reducing bias and increasing diversity in the selection of people and projects, yet its effectiveness is not fully understood. We explore the impact of blinded review on gender inclusion in a unique setting: innovative research grant proposals submitted to the Gates Foundation from 2008-2017. Despite blinded review, female applicants receive significantly lower scores, which cannot be explained by reviewer characteristics, proposal topics, or ex-ante measures of applicant quality. By contrast, the gender score gap is no longer significant after controlling for text-based measures of proposals’ titles and descriptions. Specifically, we find strong gender differences in the usage of broad and narrow words, suggesting that differing communication styles are a key driver of the gender score gap. Importantly, the text-based measures that predict higher reviewer scores do not also predict higher ex-post innovative performance. Instead, female applicants exhibit a greater response in follow-on scientific output after an accepted proposal, relative to male applicants. Our results reveal that gender differences in writing and communication are a significant contributor to gender disparities in the evaluation of science and innovation.
Keywords: gender inclusion; blinded review; innovation; evaluation; diversity
JEL Codes: D70; J16; M14; O31; O32
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Funding and Applicant Gender (I24) | Differential Impact on Reviewer Scores (C52) |
| Funding and Applicant Gender (I24) | Differential Impact on Innovative Outcomes (O36) |
| Gender (J16) | Reviewer Scores (Y30) |
| Text-Based Measures (C89) | Reviewer Scores (Y30) |
| Text-Based Measures (C89) | Innovative Performance (O39) |
| Gender Disparities in Evaluations (J16) | Writing Style and Word Choice (Y20) |
| Female Applicants (J16) | Follow-on Scientific Output (O36) |