Acta Sociologica Abstract Biased practices by employers have been suggested as one possible cause for the observed gender disparities in labor market outcomes. While US-based laboratory experiments show

European Sociological Review, 2017, Vol. 33, No. 3, 337–348 In research on fatherhood premiums and motherhood penalties in career-related outcomes, employers’ discriminatory behaviours are often argued

Gunn Birkelund: Gender discrimination in hiring

Gunn Elisabeth Birkelund, PhD in Sociology is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo (since 1999). Her main publications cover labour marke

European Sociological ReviewFull text Abstract Scholars have documented ethnic and gender discrimination across labour markets since the 1970s by using field experiments (correspondence tests) in which

International Migration Review, s. 1-28. DOI: 10.1111/imre.12170 Abstract We examine differences in the intensity of employer stereotypes of men and women with Arabic names in Sweden by testing how much

Social Science Research, vol. 98 Abstract Advanced labor markets are typically stratified by origin with a majority ethnic group occupying more desirable (high-skilled) positions and subordinated ethnic choices reinforce these patterns. This would be the case if employers were more reluctant to hire subordinate minority job applicants for high-skilled positions than for low-skilled occupations. We use experimental correspondence audit data derived from 6407 job applications sent to job openings in the Swedish labor market, where the ‘foreignness’ of the job applicants has been randomly assigned to otherwise equally merited job applications. We find that negative discrimination of job applicants with ‘foreign’ names is very similar in the high-skilled and low-skilled segments of the labor market. There is no significant relative ethnic difference in chances of callbacks by skill level. Because baseline callback rates are higher in high-skilled occupations, discrimination however translates into a significantly larger percentage unit callback difference between ‘natives’ and ‘foreigners’ in these occupations, in particular between male job applicants. That is, the 

We are looking for a postdoctoral researcher in the project “Predicting the diffusion of AI-applications”.

Katrin Ausprung, History and Sociology, Konstanz University, Germany People’s housing conditions and places of residence have serious impacts on individual living conditions and social stratification.

Completed: Inclusion and Exclusion at the Labor Market – an Intersectional Field Experiment

This project will investigate the role of employer hiring discrimination in the reproduction of ethnic and gender segregation, and inequality in the labor market.

Gunn Elisabeth Birkelund, PhD in Sociology is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo (since 1999). Her main publications cover labour markeGender discrimination is often regarded as an important driver of women’s disadvantage in the labor 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 conducting 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 US. However, when we pooled the data, we found no significant differences 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.