Blind Auditions: Orchestrating Impartiality

The number of female musicians in the top five American orchestras went from 5% in 1970 to 10% in 1980 and then to 25% in 1997. Sure, there were more women trying out as the years passed, but that doesn’t account for the entire difference. See, at one time orchestras tended to hire musicians they knew, like friends of friends. You had to know someone. Pressure from union members led some orchestras to change the way they auditioned for new members.

In the 1970s and 1980s, orchestras began using blind auditions. Candidates are situated on a stage behind a screen to play for a jury that cannot see them. In some orchestras, blind auditions are used just for the preliminary selection while others use it all the way to the end, until a hiring decision is made.

Even when the screen is only used for the preliminary round, it has a powerful impact; researchers have determined that this step alone makes it 50% more likely that a woman will advance to the finals. And the screen has also been demonstrated to be the source of a surge in the number of women being offered positions.  

The 1997 study cited attributes between 30% and 55% of the increase in the female proportion of orchestras to blind auditions.

Redditor Kayge told a story about a blind audition for a tuba player in a major orchestra that surprised everyone when a tiny 20-year-old woman won. That was Carol Jantsch of the Philadelphia Orchestra, who became the first female principal tuba player for a major American orchestra in 2006. She also became the youngest member of the orchestra. It’s sad to think that she could have been dismissed as a possibility if the auditions were visual as well as audio. -via reddit

(Image credit: Flickr user Benjamin Linh VU)


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I've judged several barbecue contests and every one of them is double-blind: the contestants turn in their finished food to the organizers, who then assign a number to each contestant's plate. The contestants don't know what their number is and we (judges) are never told anyone's name. When the judges are finished scoring and burping, then the organizers average the scores for each number, then work backwards to see which contestant is the winner.
It's a simple system and it works.
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I have often commented to others that blind taste testing on cooking shows would be most beneficial to female chefs because many times (most times, actually) men win these competitions. If the judges had no idea who was doing the cooking I believe there would be more women winners. Just placing all the cooked items on a table without knowing who made what would be so much fairer for all of the contestants and the judges wouldn't be able to bring out their personal biases about specific people on the show and only have the food to determine who made it best.
Same for shows like Project Runway. I finally quit watching that show because of how they primarily picked men to win their competitions. Yes, there have been female winners but I think some of those winners were chosen under duress because they couldn't consistently pick men for the win without ticking off the viewers. Had the judges not known who had made the items I think they would not have been so biased.
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