Gender Discrimination in the Hiring of Skilled Professionals in Two Male-Dominated Occupational Fields

A Factorial Survey Experiment with Real-World Vacancies and Recruiters in Four European Countries

authored by

Ariane Bertogg, Christian Imdorf, Christer Hyggen, Dimitris Parsanoglou, Rumiana Stoilova

Abstract

The present article investigates gender discrimination in recruitment for two male-dominated occupations (mechanics and IT professionals). We empirically test two different explanatory approaches to gender discrimination in hiring; namely, statistical discrimination and taste-based discrimination. Previous studies suggest that, besides job applicants’ characteristics, organisational features play a role in hiring decisions. Our article contributes to the literature on gender discrimination in the labour market by investigating its opportunity structures located at the recruiter, job and company level, and how gender discrimination varies across occupations and countries. The analysed data come from a factorial survey experiment conducted in four countries (Bulgaria, Greece, Norway and Switzerland). Real job advertisements were sampled, and the recruiters in charge of hiring for these positions (n = 1,920) rated up to ten hypothetical CVs (vignettes). We find gender discrimination in Bulgaria and Greece and to a lesser degree in Switzerland, but not in Norway. The degree of gender discrimination appears to be greater in mechanics than in IT. Multivariate analyses that test a number of opportunity structures for discrimination suggest that mechanisms of statistical discrimination rather than those of taste-based discrimination might be at work.

Organisation(s)

Sociology Department

External Organisation(s)

University of Konstanz
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS)
Panteion University
Oslo Metropolitan University

Type

Article

Journal

Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie

Volume

72

Pages

261-289

No. of pages

29

ISSN

0023-2653

Publication date

09.2020

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 5 - Gender Equality

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-020-00671-6 (Access: Open)