Methodology

In the 1970s and 1980s, most symphony orchestras in the United States began adopting “blind” auditions whereby the identity of potential candidates was concealed from the jury by a screen. In this study, the authors make use of existing audition records and orchestra personnel rosters to examine the effects of “blind” auditions at various stages in the audition process on the likelihood of women advancing and eventually being hired. The dataset is unique because it contains the complete contestant pool for each audition and allows authors to link individuals across multiple auditions.

Audition records were collected from 8 major symphony orchestras, dating from the late 1950s to 1995. The analysis sample for auditions consists of 14,121 person-rounds, 7,065 individuals and 588 audition-rounds.