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What Happens When Employers Can No Longer Discriminate in Job Ads?

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  • Peter Kuhn
  • Kailing Shen

Abstract

When employers' explicit gender requests were unexpectedly removed from a Chinese job board overnight, pools of successful applicants became more integrated: women's (men's) share of callbacks to jobs that had requested men (women) rose by 61 (146) percent. The removal "worked" in this sense because it generated a large increase in gender-mismatched applications, and because those applications were treated surprisingly well by employers, suggesting that employers' gender requests often represented relatively weak preferences or outdated stereotypes. The job titles that were integrated by the ban, however, were not the most gendered ones, and were disproportionately lower-wage jobs.

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  • Peter Kuhn & Kailing Shen, 2023. "What Happens When Employers Can No Longer Discriminate in Job Ads?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 113(4), pages 1013-1048, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:113:y:2023:i:4:p:1013-48
    DOI: 10.1257/aer.20211127
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    Cited by:

    1. Dustan, Andrew & Koutout, Kristine & Leo, Greg, 2022. "Second-order beliefs and gender," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 752-781.
    2. Card, David & Colella, Fabrizio & Lalive, Rafael, 2021. "Gender Preferences in Job Vacancies and Workplace Gender Diversity," IZA Discussion Papers 14758, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Bamieh, Omar & Ziegler, Lennart, 2023. "Gender-age differences in hiring rates and prospective wages—Evidence from job referrals to unemployed workers," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    4. Shen, Kailing, 2021. "Gender Discrimination," IZA Discussion Papers 14897, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
    • J41 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Labor Contracts
    • J63 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Turnover; Vacancies; Layoffs
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing
    • M51 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Firm Employment Decisions; Promotions
    • P31 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions - - - Socialist Enterprises and Their Transitions

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