We draw on a field experiment conducted in five European countries to analyze hiring discrimination on the basis of gender and race. We adopt an intersectional perspective and relate existing theories on gender and racial discrimination to recent work on the gendered stereotype content of different races. We find that employers prefer hiring white women over men for female-typed jobs. By contrast, women of color do not have any advantage over men of the same race. Moreover, black and Middle Eastern men encounter the strongest racial discrimination in male-typed jobs, where it is possible that their stereotyped masculinity, made salient by the occupational context, is perceived as threatening. Overall, we argue that the employment chances of applicants of different gender and racial backgrounds are highly dependent on their perceived congruence (or lack thereof) with the feminine or masculine traits of the job they apply to.

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Experimental research on ethnic discrimination in labour markets is often concerned with individual-level mechanisms. Structural macro-level drivers of discrimination, however, are more difficult to address. We present the results of a harmonized correspondence test conducted in Norway and the UK, two contexts that differ significantly along several dimensions expected to matter for the prevalence of ethnic discrimination. We focus on discrimination towards a particular minority group that holds a socio-economically disadvantaged position in both national contexts: Pakistani migrants and their descendants. Based on the higher degree of labour market flexibility and better developed anti-discrimination policies in Britain, we expect there a lower level of discrimination than in Norway. This expectation is further reinforced by comparing the immigration histories of the two countries: in Britain, colonial ties and a longer history of immigration could potentially reduce discriminatory behaviour towards ethnic minorities in general. We show that in both countries Pakistani applicants receive significantly fewer positive responses from employers than the majority group. In line with expectations, discrimination is more severe in Norway, although this cross-national difference is only statistically significant when using a strict definition of positive callbacks. More nuanced analyses reveal an additional negative effect of disclosing one's affiliation to Islam, which further reduces the likelihood of Pakistani applicants to receive a callback in Norway.

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Gender discrimination is often regarded as an important driver of women's disadvantage in the labour market, yet earlier studies show mixed results. However, because different studies employ different research designs, the estimates of discrimination cannot be compared across countries. By utilizing data from the first harmonized comparative field experiment on gender discrimination in hiring in six countries, we can directly compare employers' callbacks to fictitious male and female applicants. The countries included vary in a number of key institutional, economic, and cultural dimensions, yet we found no sign of discrimination against women. This cross-national finding constitutes an important and robust piece of evidence. Second, we found discrimination against men in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK, and no discrimination against men in Norway and the United States. However, in the pooled data the gender gradient hardly differs across countries. Our findings suggest that although employers operate in quite different institutional contexts, they regard female applicants as more suitable for jobs in female-dominated occupations, ceteris paribus, while we find no evidence that they regard male applicants as more suitable anywhere.