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The objective of this dissertation is to analyse whether non-competition agreements might affect the promotion of women and minorities to managerial positions. It is argued that enforceable non-competition agreements should enable employees to better signal their productivity over time by reducing their mobility and extending their tenure. Accord-ingly, this should ease a profound employee assessment based on revealed productivi-ty, rather than on readily observable characteristics such as gender or race. Eventually, non-competition agreements should increase the chances of being promoted to mana-gerial positions of those employees (women and minorities) whose productivity might be initially underrated. This study utilises data about US executive promotion from 1991 to 2006 and tracks longitudinal variation in the enforcement of non-competition agree-ments of US federal states. The findings point out that in states where the enforcement of non-competition agreements becomes stricter, the probability of a CEO being either a woman or a member of a minority increases. Stricter enforcement also increases the likelihood that a higher proportion of board seats is held by women and/or minorities.