Anticipatory Sorting and Gender Segregation in Temporary Employment

Isabel Fernandez-Mateo () and Zella King ()
Additional contact information
Isabel Fernandez-Mateo: London Business School, London NW1 4SA, United Kingdom
Zella King: Henley Business School, University of Reading, Reading RG6 6UD, United Kingdom

Management Science, 2011, vol. 57, issue 6, 989-1008

Abstract: We examine the roots of gender segregation in the screening process by using a longitudinal data set of candidates considered for temporary projects at a staffing firm and following their progress through the hiring pipeline. Theories invoked to explain gender segregation across jobs traditionally rely on firm-specific human capital and expectations of future commitment to explain this phenomenon. These do not apply in this setting. Yet we find that the staffing firm is more likely to shortlist women for low-paid projects and less likely to do so for high-paid ones. These effects are due to women being considered for different projects than men, and associated at least partially to the level of competition within vacancies. Although client companies also exhibit some gender-sorting behavior in the later steps of the hiring process, they are more likely to prefer women and less likely to sort them into lower-paid projects. Our findings are consistent with "anticipatory gender-sorting" mechanisms, by which first screeners generate segregation when narrowing down the pool of candidates for later decision makers. We discuss the implications of this case for theories of gender stratification and workplace inequality, especially in mediated labor markets. This paper was accepted by Jesper Sørensen, organizations.

Keywords: organizational studies; personnel; hiring; gender stratification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.1110.1333 (application/pdf)

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:inm:ormnsc:v:57:y:2011:i:6:p:989-1008

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Management Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().