The article investigates the existence of wage gap for gender in the Brazilian labor market. The introduction of compulsory open exams applied in Brazil to public service job candidates as a way to prevent clientelism and nepotism. Our hypothesis is that if there is discrimination, so we should observe gender wage gap reduction after the introduction of the open exams. We find evidence in favor of this hypothesis, thus suggesting that there is discrimination against women, even if we assume that male and female employees have the same human capital characteristics within each public sector.