Gendered Promotion Regimes: Pathways to Partnership in a Large Law Firm

Despite tremendous progress in education and employment over the past 50 years, women remain substantially underrepresented at the top echelons of many organizations. While there is extensive research on gender gaps in hiring and performance evaluations, one critical moment of stratification that has received less empirical attention is internal promotion to the senior ranks of high-status firms. In this paper, we investigate internal promotion decisions in a high-status, competitive labor market: corporate law firms. Using a unique longitudinal dataset of personnel records from a major law firm that contains detailed information about employee characteristics, multiple dimensions of performance, and promotion outcomes, we find that women are significantly less likely to be promoted to partnership than otherwise equivalent men. Crucially, we argue that this gender gap in promotion is due, in part, to the existence of gendered promotion regimes in which employers base promotions on different criteria for women and for men. Women and men in our sample have similar levels of pre-firm preparation and performance on nearly all dimensions recorded by firms. However, when determining whom to promote, the firm rewards specific dimensions and trajectories of performance differently by employee gender. Our findings contribute to theories of gendered organizations by suggesting that the pathway to internal promotion within high-status firms varies by employee gender: a fast-track for men, and a waiting room for women.