Surprisingly, the answer is no!
Research shows that there is pervasive bias against women in
Bias also comes into play in letters of recommendation. Accomplishments are often devalued or credited to male colleagues [4], and characteristics that are considered assets in males are considered faults in women:
In one study, first done in 1968 and then replicated in 1983, college students were asked to rate identical articles according to specific criteria. The authors' names attached to the articles were clearly male or female, but were reversed for each group of raters: what one group thought had been written by a male, the second group thought had been written by a female, and vice versa. Articles supposedly written by women were consistently ranked lower than when the very same articles were thought to have been written by a male [Goldberg 1968,Paludi et al 1985,Paludi et al 1983].In a similar study, department chairs were asked to make hypothetical hiring decisions and to assign faculty rank on the basis of vita. For vitae with male names, chairs recommended the rank of associate professor; however, the identical vita with a female name merited only the rank of assistant professor [Fidell 1975].
E. Spertus