What Have Audit Experiments Taught Us about the Effects of Gender on Hiring?

• In Event: Gender Norms, Gender Rights, and Power

Abstract

To date, at least 60 employment audit and survey experiments carried out on five continents have randomized the gender of fictitious applicants to measure the extent of hiring discrimination on the basis of gender. We collect all such studies, reanalyze them using a common set of statistical procedures, and synthesize them in a series of meta-analyses. We find that the effect of being a women, relative to a man, is about 2 percentage points. The effect of being a woman is stronger in industries dominated by women (6pp), remains positive in mixed industries (2pp) and turns slightly negative in industries dominated by men (-2pp). The effect is similarly positive for women in ethnic majorities compared with women in ethnic minorities. We discuss also how audit studies and survey experiments have demonstrated an overall lack of discrimination against women at the entry level, but are not well-suited for studying employment discrimination over the course of careers.

Authors

• Diana Galos, Aarhus University

• Alexander Coppock, Yale University