This study investigates whether women are more lenient in evaluating the performance of others. We examine the gender-specific behavior of female and male critics in expert evaluations, considering their allocated level of experience by using data from high-prestige wine assessments. We demonstrate that women rate, on average, less generously than men, even in direct comparison. In addition, we show that women with advanced experience levels are less generous than the most experienced same-sex reviewer, whereas this effect is not observed for men. Finally, controlling for self-selection into a particular field (i.e., wine critics), this study confirms previous findings using data, e.g., from professional sports: Unobserved heterogeneity drives results generated in lab experiments.
