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Mind the Job: The Role of Occupational Characteristics in Explaining Gender Discrimination

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Abstract

Using correspondence testing, we investigate how job characteristics affect gender discrimination in hiring. In particular, we analyse whether discrimination against women is moderated by the occupation’s sex composition, required level of decision-making and expected educational level. To do so, we carried out a correspondence study in 2016, in which we sent two pairs of matched male–female applications to 1371 job postings for a heterogeneous selection of occupations in two large cities in Spain. Differences in response rates and response order by gender were then used as a tool to assess discrimination. The results show that job characteristics matter for gender discrimination and that their effects are complementary. Women were particularly discriminated against in connection with jobs that involved decision-making, in male-dominated and mixed occupations, and in jobs requiring both high and low education levels. This discrimination is likely to stem from the activation of both stereotypes and prejudices.

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Notes

  1. Jobs at the extreme of the sex-ratio composition (having more than 80% men or women) were eliminated from the analysis, because it could be difficult to observe variations by sex in hiring.

  2. Sex ratios and average educational levels for each occupation were estimated using Spain’s Labour Force Survey (2nd quarter 2015).

  3. For anonymity reasons, we do not provide a reference for these figures. It is available upon request.

  4. For 13 of the job postings, the employer closed the selection process before we could send all 4 applications.

  5. In our design, we also contemplated the possibility that the differential treatment shown by the same employer towards women with one trait of interest (e.g., low skills) could vary according to the other trait of interest (e.g., if they had children) by sending six applications to a small subset of job postings (79 job postings, or about 8.5% of all postings applied for). In the analyses we control for the number of applications sent to each job posting.

  6. Alonso-Villar & Coral Del Río (2010) show that women are more segregated at an older age, while men are more evenly distributed across occupations in the Spanish labour market. Gender segregation by age and occupations do not affect our analyses, as we experimentally manipulate the number of fictitious job applicants across occupations and sex groups, and the age of the candidates.

  7. See note 3 above.

  8. See note 3 above.

  9. When we use the words “first” and “fourth” we do not mean to say that employers selected our candidates in that order relative to all candidates who applied to the position, as we do not know which other candidates may have been contacted by the employers, apart from the other fictitious applicants in the set. The order is established exclusively in terms of the time at which our fictitious candidates were contacted.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Julia Rubio, Juan Ramon Jiménez and Guillem Subirachs for their contribution to the field work. The authors also thank the Barcelona MAR Health Park Consortium for reviewing the ethical aspects of this research, and the two anonymous referees for their constructive comments on an earlier version of this article.

Funding

Funding was provide by “la Caixa” Foundation (Grant no. Recercaixa2014).

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  1. Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain

    Clara Cortina, Jorge Rodríguez & M. José González

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  1. Clara Cortina
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  2. Jorge Rodríguez
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Correspondence to Clara Cortina.

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Cortina, C., Rodríguez, J. & González, M.J. Mind the Job: The Role of Occupational Characteristics in Explaining Gender Discrimination. Soc Indic Res 156, 91–110 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-021-02646-2

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