Gender Discrimination in Job Ads: Theory and Evidence

Peter Kuhn and Kailing Shen

No 5195, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We study firms' advertised gender preferences in a population of ads on a Chinese internet job board, and interpret these patterns using a simple employer search model. The model allows us to distinguish firms’ underlying gender preferences from firms’ propensities to restrict their search to their preferred gender. The model also predicts that higher job skill requirements should reduce the tendency to gender-target a job ad; this is strongly confirmed in our data. We also find that firms' underlying gender preferences are highly job-specific, with many firms requesting men for some jobs and women for others, and with one third of the variation in gender preferences within firm*occupation cells.

Keywords: discrimination; gender; China; internet; search (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2010-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published in: The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2013, 128 (1), 287-336

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Related works:
Working Paper: Gender Discrimination in Job Ads: Theory and Evidence (2011)
Working Paper: Gender Discrimination in Job Ads: Theory and Evidence (2010)
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