Job search study
Experiment shows: In “women’s professions” men have poorer application chances
Researchers have examined gender discrimination in applications
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Not only women are discriminated against in the labor market. A scientific experiment shows that male applicants have worse cards in some professions.
When gender discrimination in the labor market is mentioned, it is mostly about discrimination against women. On average, they still earn less than men, they sit less often in management positions and often had to bear greater burdens even during the Corona crisis. But it also works the other way around: An international team of researchers has now found that men are discriminated against in parts of the working world.
Accordingly, male applicants have worse chances of being invited to an interview than female applicants if they apply for a typical “female job”. For male-dominated professions, however, the scientists could not find any such discrimination against female applicants.
That’s the result of one study by researchers from the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB) and other European scientists published in the journal “European Sociological Review”. The work is based on a cross-border field study in Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and the USA.
Experiment for six professions
The experiment worked like this: First, the researchers sent thousands of fictitious applications for real job offers – and then analyzed the employers’ responses. The applications were written for young men and women between the ages of 22 and 26 and targeted vacancies in three male-dominated professions – software development, sales, cooking – and three professions in which more women work – payroll, receptionist, salesperson. Around 4,300 replies from employers were included in the analysis.
In four of the six countries it was shown that men in supposedly female professions have worse cards. In Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK, male applicants were five to nine percent less likely to receive feedback than female applicants. In Norway and the USA, however, there was no evidence of discrimination against male applicants.
Discrimination in Germany
The results were clearest for Germany. “In Germany, for example, male applicants had to write almost twice as many applications to be invited to an interview or to be asked for further information,” explains study author Jonas Radl from the WZB.
In contrast, women were not disadvantaged in any of the countries and professions examined, not even in the supposedly male domains. The research group concludes from this that some ideas about discrimination against women in the labor market may no longer be up-to-date. “We have to check our assumptions that women are always the disadvantaged group. Gender-based discrimination is obviously more complex,” says study author Gunn Elisabeth Birkelund from the University of Oslo.
Finally, the scientists recommend further research on the topic, as the informative value of the study has its limits. On the one hand, the results could be different if other professions and older applicants are considered. On the other hand, it was not possible to investigate in the experiment which of the fictitious applicants would actually have got the job in the end, and what the pay and further career opportunities look like.