Abstract
This article develops a framework for understanding the role of gender in negotiations of expert authority and tests the new approach with an analysis of legal disputes about expert witness credibility ( N = 435). Content-coded data from patent infringement, civil rights, and medical malpractice lawsuits in U.S. district courts indicate that lawyers’ challenges to expert witnesses’ credibility reflect widely held cultural beliefs about gender and certain kinds of expertise: whereas women are more likely than men to be challenged as unqualified to testify, men are more likely than women to be contested as irrelevant to the case. Furthermore, although highly credentialed women and men have equal chances of overcoming credibility challenges, women with fewer credentials are substantially more likely than men to be excluded from court. Overall, findings suggest that women must clear a higher bar than men to demonstrate their credibility as expert witnesses. Moreover, this study indicates that disputes about expert witness credibility are a site where stereotypes about gender and expertise are reproduced in the justice system.
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