Steering Women and Men Into Different, Unequal Jobs? Two Resume Audit Studies Investigating Hiring Practices

• In Event: 212 - Section on Inequality, Poverty and Mobility Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 10. Labor and Inequality

Abstract

While we know that men and women make different job choices, we do not know the extent to which employers contribute to occupational sex segregation through hiring discrimination. Using novel data from two resumé audit studies, this research is the first U.S. region-wide study to investigate the presence of, and contexts associated with, hiring discrimination on the basis of gender across two different occupational classes, white-collar and working-class. Results indicate that employers significantly favored female applicants in both female-dominated white-collar positions and in one of the two tested female-dominated working-class positions; whereas, the male applicant was advantaged in both male-dominated working-class jobs. Based on content analyses of job posting descriptions, this study also provides evidence that discrimination operates, in part, through gender stereotypes held by employers. The current study challenges widely held assumptions that segregation is predominately due to men’s and women’s different career choices and offers compelling evidence that discrimination at the early point of the hiring process creates and perpetuates occupational gender segregation—particularly in working-class jobs—and is a significant driver of economic gender inequality.

Author

• Jill Evelyn Yavorsky, The Ohio State University