Representation is Not Sufficient for Selecting Gender Diversity

One strategy for promoting female leaders in science and technology professions is to appoint more women to the
committees that select leaders. Unfortunately, evidence from other settings, such as committees for selecting
judges or professors, suggests this approach does not work. We use a natural experiment to test the idea that
organizational norms supporting gender diversity are necessary for representation on “selectorates” to promote
gender diversity among leaders in science and technology. Our empirical setting is the standard-setting organization
that develops key protocols for Internet hardware and software. We find that when more women are
randomly selected for the committee that appoints the organization’s leaders, the committee appoints more
female leaders, but only after a set of interventions meant to increase members’ awareness of the benefits of
gender diversity.

Baron, Justus, Bernhard Ganglmair, Nicola Persico, Timothy Simcoe and Emanuele Tarantino (2024), Representation is Not Sufficient for Selecting Gender Diversity, Research Policy 53(6) , 104994