Sexual orientation discrimination in hiring

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in ABSTRACTLittle research has been done to examine discrimination against gays and lesbians in the labor market. Badgett (1995) was the first to investigate labor market outcomes of gays and lesbians using a random data set. While her results suggested lower earnings for lesbians compared to heterosexual females, later studies indicated the contrary and indeed consistently documented an income premium for lesbian women. Considering the wage penalty we observe for most social minorities in the labor market (women, ethnic minorities), this result appears as striking. The apparently "privileged" labor market situation can be reconciled with the existence of labor market discrimination, however. Problems like sample selection and unobserved heterogeneity -in particular lesbians' violation of stereotypical female gender roles -might be responsible for their higher earnings.To investigate whether discrimination against lesbians actually does exist, a labor market experiment is conducted. Job applications of candidates, who are equivalent in their human capital but differ in their sexual orientation, are sent out in response to job advertisements. Furthermore, to test whether increased masculinity affects labor market outcomes, the applicants differ in their perceived gender identity.While results show a strong negative effect for lesbian orientation, gender identity does not have a significant overall impact on hiring chances.

Access to the labour market for gays and lesbians: Research review

“…Findings of all of the studies that investigated the moderating role of occupation support H11, which posited that the bias against gay men and lesbians differs across occupations (Ahmed et al, 2013;Baert, 2014;Drydakis, 2009Drydakis, , 2011Drydakis, , 2014Drydakis, , 2015Leppel, 2009;Weichselbaumer, 2003). The determination of relative size of bias across occupations is difficult because a large number of contextual factors need to be taken into account.…”

“…For lesbian applicants, Gorsuch (2014) found a positive effect of masculine gender on hireability ratings (p ࣘ .1) when the evaluator was male, but no significant effect when the evaluator was female. According to Weichselbaumer (2003), being masculine or feminine did not impose any additional negative effect on the call-back rates of lesbian applicants. While gay men received lower hiring recommendations (p ࣘ .01) from male evaluators (Gorsuch, 2014) and lower probability of call-back for an interview (Gorsuch, 2015), their congruence with gender stereotypes did not lead to any additional (dis)advantage.…”

Sexual orientation, income, and non-pecuniary economic outcomes: new evidence from young lesbians in Australia

“…5 Only one study has found that lesbians fare significantly worse than their heterosexual counterparts. A resume study by Weichselbaumer (2003) on the Austrian labor market found that fake ''lesbian'' resumes-as indicated by affiliation or work experience with gay-themed organizations-received significantly fewer interview callbacks than other resumes indicating similar skills. This suggests that lesbians may face labor market discrimination on the basis of hiring, a result which has implications for interpreting estimates of the lesbian earnings advantage described above.…”

The Signaling Value of Labor Market Programs

“…This literature also shows that employers seem to care about details. For instance, the studies that investigate the impact of sexual orientation signal homosexuality by mentioning volunteering work for a gay or lesbian rights organization in the resume (Weichselbaumer, 2003) or ethnicity is sometimes signaled by first names (Bertrand and Mullainathan, 2004). From this literature, one clearly gets the impression that employers are on the lookout for every piece of usable information they can access in order to facilitate the selection process.…”

“…Examples of signals that are known to affect recruitment selection include education, nationality, skin color, age, family status, physical attractiveness, to name a few. In some studies, even apparently minor details such as the first name (Bertrand and Mullainathan, 2004) or volunteering work (Weichselbaumer, 2003) have been shown to impact on the chances of a callback. For this reason, we can expect information concerning participation in labor market programs to be a potential carrier of meaning and thus considered and interpreted by employers just like any other potentially relevant type of information.…”