The Spanish Equality Law and the Gender Balance in the Evaluation Committees: An Opportunity for Women’s Promotion in Higher Education

Despite advances in gender policy and equality laws in the twenty-first century, women are still a minority in the full professor category in Europe. Some measures establish gender quotas to balance gatekeeper positions, which will supposedly pave the way to make women’s integration into senior higher education positions easier. In Spain, Organic Act 3/2007 1 of 22 March on effective equality between women and men launched progressive norms governing gender issues, and the Spanish Science and Technology Act (2011) incorporated measures to promote effective equality in academic institutions. This paper evaluates how Spanish evaluation agencies’ compliance with implementing gender balance has affected the composition of evaluation committees and its impact on the advancement of women in science. Findings reveal some positive figures on women’s representation in recent decades, even though gender-balanced committees do not show any clear evidence of causing this effect. There seems to be no correlation between gender-balanced committees and women’s success rates, suggesting intermediate variables affect women’s low participation in competitive submissions. It explores several factors concerning two agencies’ evaluation procedures, such as formality and transparency, direct/multiple gatekeeping processes, the influence of epistemic cultures, cohorts and confidence of female candidates.