Fight like a Woman: Domestic Violence and Female Judges in Brazil

TL;DR

This study shows that female judges in Brazil are more likely to convict domestic violence offenders and take different judicial actions, highlighting gender-based differences in judicial decision-making and their implications.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence of gender influence on domestic violence case outcomes and identifies specific channels explaining this gap.

Findings

Female judges are 28% more likely to convict domestic violence offenders.

The gender conviction-rate gap for domestic violence is larger than for other crimes.

Female judges exhibit different judicial behaviors, such as longer sentences and more hearings.

Abstract

We investigate the impact of judges' gender on the outcome of domestic violence cases. Using data from S\~ao Paulo, Brazil, between 2011 and 2019, we find that a domestic violence case assigned to a female judge is 28% (9.7 p.p.) more likely to result in a conviction than a case assigned to a male judge with similar career characteristics. To show that this decision gap rises due to different gender perspectives about domestic violence and not because female judges are stricter than their male counterparts in all rulings, we compare it against the gender conviction-rate gap in similar types of crime. We find that this gap for domestic violence cases is larger than the same gap for other physical assault cases (8.5 p.p.). Furthermore, we find evidence that at least two channels explain this gender conviction-rate gap for domestic violence cases: gender-based differences in evidence interpretation and gender-based sentencing criteria. We also find that female judges write longer sentences, schedule more hearings, and write more judicial documents than their male peers when analyzing domestic violence cases. Lastly, we find that the gender conviction-rate gap has no significant impact on the probability of appeals, ruling reversals, or recidivism.