IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/32383.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Do Female–Owned Employment Agencies Mitigate Discrimination and Expand Opportunity for Women?

Author

Listed:
  • Jennifer Hunt
  • Carolyn Moehling

Abstract

We create a dataset of 14,000 help–wanted advertisements placed by U.S. employment agencies in 1950 and 1960, when help–wanted advertisements specified gender, and collect information on agency ownership. Female–owned agencies specialized in vacancies for women, expanding access of female job–seekers to agency services. They also advertised more skilled occupations to women than did male–owned agencies, leading to 5% higher wages for women. But they advertised more clerical jobs to men, contributing to 17% lower male wages. However, the gender wage gap within agency was the same for female-and male–owned agencies, suggesting no mitigation of discrimination.

Suggested Citation

  • Jennifer Hunt & Carolyn Moehling, 2024. "Do Female–Owned Employment Agencies Mitigate Discrimination and Expand Opportunity for Women?," NBER Working Papers 32383, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32383
    Note: DAE LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w32383.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David Neumark & Roy J. Bank & Kyle D. Van Nort, 1996. "Sex Discrimination in Restaurant Hiring: An Audit Study," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(3), pages 915-941.
    2. Christopher T. Stanton & Catherine Thomas, 2016. "Landing the First Job: The Value of Intermediaries in Online Hiring," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 83(2), pages 810-854.
    3. Jonah B. Gelbach, 2016. "When Do Covariates Matter? And Which Ones, and How Much?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(2), pages 509-543.
    4. Davis, Steven J. & Samaniego de la Parra, Brenda, 2024. "Application Flows," IZA Discussion Papers 16903, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. 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.
    6. Kuhn, Peter & Shen, Kailing & Zhang, Shuo, 2020. "Gender-targeted job ads in the recruitment process: Facts from a Chinese job board," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    7. Sandra E. Black & Philip E. Strahan, 2001. "The Division of Spoils: Rent-Sharing and Discrimination in a Regulated Industry," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 814-831, September.
    8. Peter Kuhn & Mikal Skuterud, 2004. "Internet Job Search and Unemployment Durations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 218-232, March.
    9. Ayres, Ian & Siegelman, Peter, 1995. "Race and Gender Discrimination in Bargaining for a New Car," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(3), pages 304-321, June.
    10. repec:oup:qjecon:v:128:y:2012:i:1:p:287-336 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Katherine B. Coffman & Christine L. Exley & Muriel Niederle, 2021. "The Role of Beliefs in Driving Gender Discrimination," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(6), pages 3551-3569, June.
    2. Morten Størling Hedegaard & Jean-Robert Tyran, 2018. "The Price of Prejudice," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(1), pages 40-63, January.
    3. Marie-Claire Villeval & Nabanita Datta Gupta & Anders Poulsen, 2005. "Male and Female Competitive Behavior - Experimental Evidence," Working Papers 0512, Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon.
    4. Aksoy, Billur & Chadd, Ian & Koh, Boon Han, 2023. "Sexual identity, gender, and anticipated discrimination in prosocial behavior," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    5. Cody Cook & Rebecca Diamond & Jonathan V Hall & John A List & Paul Oyer, 2021. "The Gender Earnings Gap in the Gig Economy: Evidence from over a Million Rideshare Drivers [Measuring the Gig Economy: Current Knowledge and Open Issues]," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 88(5), pages 2210-2238.
    6. Adnan, Wifag & Arin, K. Peren & Charness, Gary & Lacomba, Juan A. & Lagos, Francisco, 2022. "Which social categories matter to people: An experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 193(C), pages 125-145.
    7. Kai Barron & Ruth Ditlmann & Stefan Gehrig & Sebastian Schweighofer-Kodritsch, 2025. "Explicit and Implicit Belief-Based Gender Discrimination: A Hiring Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 71(2), pages 1600-1622, February.
    8. Devah Pager, 2007. "The Use of Field Experiments for Studies of Employment Discrimination: Contributions, Critiques, and Directions for the Future," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 609(1), pages 104-133, January.
    9. Michèle Belot & Philipp Kircher & Paul Muller, 2022. "How Wage Announcements Affect Job Search—A Field Experiment," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 14(4), pages 1-67, October.
    10. Sandra E. Black & Elizabeth Brainerd, 2004. "Importing Equality? The Impact of Globalization on Gender Discrimination," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 57(4), pages 540-559, July.
    11. David Card & Fabrizio Colella & Rafael Lalive, 2021. "Gender Preferences in Job Vacancies and Workplace Gender Diversity," NBER Working Papers 29350, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. David Neumark, 2018. "Experimental Research on Labor Market Discrimination," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(3), pages 799-866, September.
    13. Armantier, Olivier & Boly, Amadou, 2011. "A controlled field experiment on corruption," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(8), pages 1072-1082.
    14. List John A., 2007. "Field Experiments: A Bridge between Lab and Naturally Occurring Data," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 6(2), pages 1-47, April.
    15. John A. List, 2004. "The Nature and Extent of Discrimination in the Marketplace: Evidence from the Field," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(1), pages 49-89.
    16. Manning, Alan, 2011. "Imperfect Competition in the Labor Market," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 11, pages 973-1041, Elsevier.
    17. Shtudiner, Zeev & Siniver, Erez & Tobol, Yossef & Yaniv, Gideon, 2024. "Female attractiveness engenders honesty among men but dishonesty among women," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 218(C), pages 592-598.
    18. Adina D. Sterling & Roberto M. Fernandez, 2018. "Once in the Door: Gender, Tryouts, and the Initial Salaries of Managers," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(11), pages 5444-5460, November.
    19. Mitchell Hoffman & Christopher T. Stanton, 2024. "People, Practices, and Productivity: A Review of New Advances in Personnel Economics," NBER Working Papers 32849, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Diego GentilePassaro & Fuhito Kojima & Bobak Pakzad-Hurson, 2023. "Equal Pay for Similar Work," Papers 2306.17111, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2025.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J63 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Turnover; Vacancies; Layoffs
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing
    • N32 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32383. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.