The Feminist Law Professors blog has an entry today on a new article in the American Law and Economics Review titled Do Masculine Names Help Female Lawyers Become Judges? Evidence from South Carolina.
Examining the correlation between a lawyer’s advancement to a judgeship and his/her name’s masculinity, the study found that nominally masculine names appear to be favored over nominally feminine names, in comparing the judiciary to the entire population of South Carolina. The paper's intro sums up what was found:
This paper provides the first empirical test of the Portia Hypothesis: Females with masculine monikers are more successful in legal careers. Utilizing South Carolina microdata, we look for correlation between an individual’s advancement to a judgeship and his/her name’s masculinity, which we construct from the joint empirical distribution of names and gender in the state’s entire population of registered voters. We find robust evidence that nominally masculine females are favored over other females. Hence, our results support the Portia Hypothesis.
The authors determined the masculinity of a name depending on the number of males that shared the name. Some of the most masculine names included Bobby, Francis, Chris, and Carroll.
Although several reasons are probably at the root of the findings, the positive correlation between judges and masculine names does evoke many questions, and also reminds us about the unconscious and inconspicuous elements that may be determining women's legal careers.
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