Belief-based and taste-based gender discrimination. Evidence from a game show

Gender discrimination, based on taste or on perception of competence, remains to be a likely contributor to females’ lower wages and slower professional advancement. In this project we use a novel data set of decisions made by participants of the Ten to One TV show. During the game, contestants repeatedly nominate the next person to answer a question. Being nominated reduces one’s probability of eventually winning the game. General tendency to nominate one gender more often than the other signifies taste-based discrimination against this gender. The construction of the game makes it relatively more profitable to nominate the most competent rather than the least competent opponents in some strategic circumstances, which allows to identify biased perception of the two genders’ competence. Having analyzed over 6000 decisions from 117 episodes aired in the last 21 years we find clear evidence of belief-based discrimination against females, yet taste-based in favor of them.