Glass Ceiling or Merit? Gender, Promotion, and Judicial Careers in a Civil Law System

ABSTRACT This paper examines how institutional mechanisms shape gender disparities in judicial promotion within a career‐based civil‐law system, where judges advance through merit‐based hierarchies punctuated by discretionary appointments to higher courts. By design, civil‐law judiciaries are typically governed by bureaucratic, merit‐based promotion procedures. Yet even in such systems, women remain underrepresented in senior judicial positions. We develop a model to distinguish between two mechanisms— promotion aversion and sex discrimination—and derive empirically testable implications. Drawing on a unique longitudinal dataset covering the full careers of nearly 7000 Spanish judges from 2005 to 2023, we combine survival models, matched mixed‐effects regressions, and data on voluntary specialization exams to analyze career advancement. Our results show that promotion aversion and sex discrimination operate at different stages of judicial careers: women who apply for promotion are highly qualified and successful in early‐career moves, but face structural barriers in later discretionary appointments. These findings challenge assumptions about the neutrality of bureaucratic promotion systems and underscore the role of institutional discretion in reproducing inequality. The paper contributes to comparative studies of career public servants and the governance of judicial hierarchies.