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.
Highlights
The educational attainment of women has considerably improved owing to educational expansion
In Bulgaria, female candidates for a vacancy in mechanics are rated about 43% (b = –0.432***)6 less positively than their otherwise comparable male competitors
In Greece, female candidates for a vacancy in mechanics are rated about 18% less positively, in Switzerland and Bulgaria, female candidates for vacancies in information technology (IT) are rated about 5% less positively
Summary
The educational attainment of women has considerably improved owing to educational expansion. Women’s enrolment in subjects previously deemed the domains of men has increased considerably (DiPrete and Buchmann 2013). The considerable growth of the service sector (Hakim 1996) has changed labour market structures in favour of women’s employment (Charles 2003). Labour markets remain highly segregated by gender. Researchers have shown links between horizontal gender segregation—the unequal distribution of gender across occupations—and vertical segregation, that is, where female-dominated jobs pay less and offer fewer opportunities for professional development (England 2010; Leuze and Strauß 2016). Organisational constraints may push women into “family-friendly” occupations, which offer flexibility or enable part-time work in order to combine employment with domestic activities (Levanon et al 2009)
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