Measuring Bias in Job Recommender Systems: Auditing the Algorithms

Shuo Zhang and Peter Kuhn

No 32889, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We audit the job recommender algorithms used by four Chinese job boards by creating fictitious applicant profiles that differ only in their gender. Jobs recommended uniquely to the male and female profiles in a pair differ modestly in their observed characteristics, with female jobs advertising lower wages, requesting less experience, and coming from smaller firms. Much larger differences are observed in these ads’ language, however, with women’s jobs containing 0.58 standard deviations more stereotypically female content than men’s. Using our experimental design, we can conclude that these gender gaps are generated primarily by content-based matching algorithms that use the worker’s declared gender as a direct input. Action-based processes like item-based collaborative filtering and recruiters’ reactions to workers’ resumes contribute little to these gaps.

JEL-codes: C99 J16 J71 M50 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ain, nep-des, nep-exp, nep-gen, nep-hrm and nep-lab
Note: LS PR
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w32889.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32889

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w32889
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().