Caroline Paulsen, Introduction, Question #5

While reading the introduction to Naked Economics, the passage that caught my attention the most was about symphony orchestras’ blind auditions. For the past several years, I have looked forward to auditioning behind the screen myself so that I don’t have to worry about other factors that would inevitably affect judges (many of which are much smaller issues than gender). I knew that the blind audition process was created to avoid discrimination based gender (and race), but I was surprised by just how much the blind auditions have increased the probability of women making it past the first round. Sometimes the screen alone hasn't been enough to eliminate gender bias, since in some settings, the judges are able to determine a musician's gender based on the sound of their shoes. The statistic that women were 50 percent more likely to make it past the first round once auditioning behind a screen became a common practice was both surprising and disturbing, because it shows just how much bias based on things such as race and gender can go into decision making.