Taking a Pass: How Proportional Prejudice and Decisions Not to Hire Reproduce Gender Segregation

The authors propose and test a novel theory of how decisions not to hire reproduce gender segregation through what they term proportional prejudice. They hypothesize that employers are less likely to hire anyone from an applicant pool that contains a large proportion of gender-atypical applicants—th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American journal of sociology 2018-11, Vol.124 (3), p.762-813
Main Authors: Leung, Ming D., Koppman, Sharon
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Contract labor
Decision making
Disadvantaged
Employers
Employment discrimination
Gender
Gender segregation
Hiring
Impressions
Job applicants
Job descriptions
Job hunting
Job vacancies
Labor market
Prejudice
Segregation
Sexual division of labor
Stereotypes
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Summary:The authors propose and test a novel theory of how decisions not to hire reproduce gender segregation through what they term proportional prejudice. They hypothesize that employers are less likely to hire anyone from an applicant pool that contains a large proportion of gender-atypical applicants—that is, those whose gender does not match the occupation stereotype—as this leads employers to form negative impressions of all pool applicants, regardless of gender. Analyses of over 7 million applications for over 700,000 job postings by more than 200,000 freelancers in an online contract labor market support their argument. A supplemental survey experiment isolates the mechanism: applicant pools with a larger proportion of gender-atypical applicants were evaluated as less likely to contain people who “seemed skilled enough for the job.” The authors conclude by demonstrating how their theory reconciles the conflicting findings as to whether gender-atypical job seekers are disadvantaged in the hiring process.
ISSN:0002-9602
1537-5390
DOI:10.1086/700677