Impact of Organizational Context on Gendered Recruiting Decisions among Science Engineering and Technology Professionals: An Experiment

The purpose of this study is to systematically examine varied organizational contexts in which gender bias is expected to thrive. Discrimination against women is hypothesized to manifest itself implicitly in the assessment of suitability and potential of job seeking candidates. Data were obtained through an experiment among 296 full professors, senior scientists and students at a Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) University. Women's opportunities to be ranked for a job interview are contrasted with men's using Bradley Terry log-linear models for partial rankings and justifications for the respective ranking decisions are analyzed using content analysis. The findings show that women are ascribed significantly less relevant characteristics and skills in SET than men and are significantly less often ranked for job interviews by even experienced decision makers. Furthermore, homophilous pressures to select “socially compatible” candidates fortify discriminatory selection, while the request to respect anti-discrimination law in recruitment cannot prevent discriminating decisions. Implications of findings for organizational practice are discussed

Assessing discrimination in correspondence studies

Correspondence studies are popular tools for assessing discrimination against minorities, for example, in the labor market. Typically, two fake Curriculum Vitae (CVs) are sent to multiple job openings. The CVs are equivalent except for a mark identifying the disadvantaged. While it is straightforward to establish discrimination from minorities’ lower response rates, it is often unclear what its source may be. Discrimination may result as much from employers’ aversion toward a minority, as from perceptions that members have lower or more dispersed abilities that are unstandardizable in a CV. We refine existing methodologies to propose a wider-scope method capable of disentangling these three sources of discrimination and establish its face validity applying it to a correspondence study aimed at assessing labor market discrimination against ex-convicts in a local market.The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research,authorship, and/or publication of this article: Grant RecerCaixa 2013. “La regula-cio ́ n de los antecedentes penales”. Funded by La Caixa and ACUP.” GrantDER2015-64403-P. “Enforcement and supervision of sentences”. Funded by theSpanish Ministry of Economy & Competitiveness and FEDER (EU