Study shows that blind auditions may benefit female musicians

Attempts to conceal the identity of musicians auditioning for spots in orchestras can significantly increase the rate of success for women, according to a study co-authored by Wilson school professor Cecilia Rouse.

Rouse and Claudia Goldin — a professor of economics at Harvard University and one of Rouse's former thesis advisers — co-produced the study, which was published in the September-November issue of The American Economic Review.

The country's top orchestras have long been thought to discriminate against women in hiring, and in the past many renowned conductors have even asserted that women are unsuitable to play in orchestras, according to Rouse.

"It is hard to say why, but I can say that there were many orchestral leaders on record for saying that they would not hire women," Goldin said.

Director of the University Orchestra Michael Pratt said he has not witnessed this sort of discrimination during his time at the University.

"I have always been amazed that there would be any conductor a fool enough to reject a candidate because she is a woman," he said.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was a "democratization of the hiring process," according to Goldin. Prior to this period, if an orchestra was looking for new members, the conductor would privately contact nationally distinguished teachers and seek out their students.

Members of orchestras began to resist these methods of selection — which placed most recruiting power in the hands of conductors — and insisted that orchestras advertise openings and broaden participation in the hiring process.

In the 1970s and 1980s, most major U.S. orchestras began to implement blind auditions in their hiring procedures, in which candidates would audition behind a screen that would conceal their identity but not change the quality of the sound.

"We looked to see whether in the years when orchestras adopted blind auditions there was an increase in the number of women in the orchestra," said Rouse, who, like Goldin, played the flute at Harvard in an orchestra.

"We found that in the preliminary and final rounds, a woman's chance of being hired is significantly increased when blind auditions are used," Rouse said.

Their data showed that blind auditions increased the probability that a woman would advance from preliminary rounds by 50 percent. The study also found that a woman's chance of ultimate success is increased several fold when a screen is used, but the margin of error is very high, according to Rouse, since the probability of winning the competition is so low.

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Rouse and Goldin — who got the idea for the study from a throw-away line in a proposal about female conductors for the women's studies committee written by an undergraduate at Harvard — were able to obtain a large amount of information on this topic.

Beginning their study in 1992, Rouse and Goldin examined audition records from eight major orchestras dating back to the 1960s.

"A lot of people allege discrimination, but it is hard to detect it," Rouse said.

A data set was created for each individual, which contained the name from which they inferred the sex, the orchestra, the instrument, the position and whether or not the candidate advanced to the next round of auditions, according to Goldin.

Often additional information was available to which the two had not expected to gain access, such as notes taken by the judge and jury during the auditions.

"Many of the orchestras didn't even know they had full information on auditions," Goldin said.

Goldin and Rouse both said they thought it was probable that blind auditions would boost women's chances at the beginning of the study, but were not sure whether they would be able to detect any signs of discrimination.

"We went into this fairly agnostic — we wanted to see when this happened and whether it had an effect," Goldin said.