Fertility Discrimination in Hiring? Evidence from a Field Experiment

We conducted a large scale correspondence test in Switzerland, Germany, and Austria to examine whether employers discriminate among job candidates concerning family status. In German speaking countries, CVs routinely include detailed information about the job candidate's personal characteristics. We considered thirty-year-old job applicants seeking secretarial or accounting positions. We found that having a family (indicated by marriage and the presence of children and their ages, or by being married but childless) does not affect the job candidate's chances of being called back for an interview for a full-time job. However, women were significantly less likely to receive a callback compared to men if the applicant's skills were not a good fit for the advertised position, if they lived far from the workplace, or when applying to large companies. Such gender asymmetric callback decisions are likely the result of subconscious decision making. Our results remain even after controlling for differences in the variance of unobservable determinants of productivity across applicants with and without a family.