Gender discrimination in hiring: An experimental reexamination of the Swedish case

Abstract

We estimated the degree of gender discrimination in Sweden across occupations using a correspondence study design. Our analysis of employer responses to more than 3,200 fictitious job applications across 15 occupations revealed that overall positive employer response rates were higher for women than men by almost 5 percentage points. We found that this gap was driven by employer responses in female-dominated occupations. Male applicants were about half as likely as female applicants to receive a positive employer response in female-dominated occupations. For male-dominated and mixed occupations we found no significant differences in positive employer responses between male and female applicants.

Fairness in Selection Problems with Strategic Candidates

“…We can verify that db H /dα > db L /dα for α (1) m un H =m un L and db H /dα < db L /dα for α (2) m un H =m un L which concludes the proof.…”

Fairness in Selection Problems with Strategic Candidates

“…We can verify that 𝑑𝑏 𝐻 /𝑑𝛼 > 𝑑𝑏 𝐿 /𝑑𝛼 for 𝛼 (1) 𝑚 un 𝐻 =𝑚 un 𝐿 and 𝑑𝑏 𝐻 /𝑑𝛼 < 𝑑𝑏 𝐿 /𝑑𝛼 for 𝛼 (2) 𝑚 un 𝐻 =𝑚 un 𝐿 which concludes the proof.…”

“…9 We perform our numerical simulations for the values of reward 𝑆 = 1, 10, 100, 1000. The simulation result for 𝑆 = 1 is studied theoretically in the first part of this section, as 𝑆 = 1 satisfies the condition 𝑆 < 𝐶 𝐺 σ2 𝐺 /𝜙 (1). The result for 𝑆 = ∞, studied in Section 4 and Section 5, is represented in Fig.…”

“…In such cases, it is important to consider the fairness of the selection outcome-that is that there is no discrimination against demographic groups defined by sensitive attributes. Yet, there is abundant evidence, including in recent years, of discrimination in both college admission and hiring, where the applicants are discriminated by salient demographic attributes such as gender [1,19], race [5,17,30], or age [10].…”

Gender Discrimination in Hiring: Evidence from a Cross-National Harmonized Field Experiment

“…F504-505). One study also found discrimination of men in female-dominated occupations, and no gender differences in hiring in mixed or maledominated occupations (Ahmed, Granberg and Khanna, 2021). Thus, despite the obvious temptation, we cannot directly compare field-experimental evidence on gender discrimination across countries, due to heterogeneity in research designs across countries and time-periods.…”