Judicial Reform and Gender Representation: Are Women Just as Likely as Men to Get Selected to Court?

In this paper, we investigate how a change in judicial selection procedures from government nominations to public announcement with a call for applications affects diversity in the Swedish Supreme Court. We further investigate whether women are just as likely as men to get selected when open calls are introduced, by measuring applicants’ success rate, while controlling for individual level characteristics, enabling us to determine whether women once in the pool of potential candidates are just as likely as men to get selected to court. We find that women are more likely to get selected to court, not under public announcements, but rather when governments control nominations. We further find that men are more likely to get selected to court, compared to women, suggesting that aspiring female judges encounter gender-based selection bias in the ’open’ application process.