Do employer preferences contribute to Sticky Floors? A field - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Do employer preferences contribute to Sticky Floors?

A field experiment on gender discrimination in promotions

Nick Deschacht (KU Leuven) InGRID visitor at the Centre d’Estudis Demogràfics CED Seminar Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona January 29, 2015

Do employer preferences contribute to Sticky Floors?

Joint research with Stijn Baert (Ghent University & IZA) Ann-Sophie De Pauw (IESEG School of Management, LEM-CNRS) Glass Ceilings research looks at top positions (cfr. quota). Sticky Floors research looks at the lower career levels. This research is about young professionals ( Sticky Floors).

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How to determine the role of ‘employer preferences’?

• We know that women lower wages and are less likely to be
• promoted. But that doesn’t prove that there is discrimination.

Basically there are three types of reasons for gender gaps:

1. Productivity differences 2. Women don’t want to be promoted, they are less ambitious 3. Discrimination

The standard approach to measure discrimination is to use regression analysis to control for productivity and ambition (discrimination is then supposed to be the residual): = + +

+ +

The problem is that many characteristics are difficult to observe (e.g. ability, motivation, ...) omitted variable bias.

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How to determine the role of “employer preferences”?

Experiments avoid omitted variable bias by randomly assigning treatment (e.g. the effect of a medical treatment). What would be the ideal experiment to estimate the causal effect of gender on career outcomes? A feasible alternative is a “paired-CV experiment” or “correspondence study” (Bertrand & Mullainathan, AER 2004)

Two fictitious job applications are sent to real job openings. These applications differ only by the gender of the applicant. By monitoring the subsequent call back, unequal treatment is identified.

Omitted variable bias is not an issue.

• We are the first to use this method to study the relation

between gender and promotions.

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Method

We randomly selected 576 vacancies for jobs

From the database of the Public Employment Agency of Flanders. Jobs targeting Bachelors in Business Administration and Masters in Business Economics. Jobs requiring at most 5 years of work experience.

Based on the information in the vacancy we scored each vacancy on two promotion dimensions:

1. Occupational level: A job at a higher ISCO level implies a promotion. 2. Job authority: If the new job holds supervision authority it implies a promotion.

We then sent out 2 applications to each of the 576 vacancies.

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The method in practice

• We cannot send the exact same CVs because that would be suspicious:
• Types A and B are identical regarding education, experience, language

and ICT skills, driver’s license, nationality, ...).

• They differ in the details (e.g. lay-out).

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CURRICULUM VITAE TYPE A 5 YEARS OF WORK EXPERIENCE IN JUNIOR POSITION STIJN VAN LANCKER CURRICULUM VITAE TYPE B 5 YEARS OF WORK EXPERIENCE IN JUNIOR POSITION ELKE DE VOS Vacancy N

The method in practice

We also added a short cover letter with the same information (Where was the vacancy found? + Reference to earlier work experience? + Hope to be invited for a job interview).

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Vacancy N + 1 CURRICULUM VITAE TYPE A 5 YEARS OF WORK EXPERIENCE IN JUNIOR POSITION ELKE DE VOS CURRICULUM VITAE TYPE B 5 YEARS OF WORK EXPERIENCE IN JUNIOR POSITION STIJN VAN LANCKER

The method in practice

We created an e-mail address and a telephone number for each of our ficticious applicants with a simple voice mail message (we never answered the phone directly). All the job applications were sent by e-mail. The second application was sent 24 hours after the first one. Positive call back

Invitation for a job interview Request for more information or proposal for another job

Negative call back

Rejection No reaction 30 days after the deadline for applications

In the case of positive call back we e-mailed asap to withdraw the application.

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Ethics?

Criticisms:

• The employers don’t know they are part of an experiment.
• It costs time and money for the employers.
• Researchers also have personal interests.

Defense:

• The social costs of discrimination are greater than the individual

costs for the employer.

• It is impossible to do this with informed consent.
• The costs for employers were kept to a minimum.
• We only report aggregated results. No legal actions against

discriminators.

• Our research was approved by an ethical committee.

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Results (1)

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Conclusion & limitations

• We sent out fictitious job

applications to test whether employers discriminate more against women applying for promotion jobs. Women get less call back when they apply for jobs at a better ISCO level.

• This finding does not rule out that
• ther factors (productivity,

employee preferences, ...) also contribute to Sticky Floors.

• Limitation: we only look at

discrimination in the hiring phase.

Thank you for your attention!

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