Gender and organisational dynamics in legal decision-making: Evidence from Chile's Prosecution Office

This article examines how gender and institutional structures shape legal decision-making. Drawing on a unified theoretical model of bounded rationality and legal decision-making, we analyse 1.26 million criminal complaints filed in Chile's Prosecution Office between 2015 and 2022. Integrating insights from rational choice, identity and gender studies, and behavioural organisation theory, we explain how prosecutors evaluate uncertainty and cost when deciding whether to charge a defendant. Using coarsened exact matching and multilevel modelling to account for non-random case assignment, complemented by placebo, specification, and sensitivity checks, we find that female prosecutors are generally less likely to prosecute – but more likely to do so in gender-salient cases. Leadership, experience, and caseload dynamics also display gendered effects. These findings highlight how individual identities interact with institutional environments to reproduce or resist inequality in legal outcomes.