Age and Gender Profiling in the Chinese and Mexican Labor Markets: Evidence from Four Job Boards

Miguel Delgado Helleseter (), Peter Kuhn and Kailing Shen
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Miguel Delgado Helleseter: California State University, Channel Islands

No 9891, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: When permitted by law, employers sometimes state the preferred age and sex of their employees in job ads. We study this practice using data from one Mexican and three Chinese job boards, showing that it is widely used to request both genders and is especially prevalent in jobs with low skill requirements. For example, on the job board serving less-skilled production and service workers in China, 72 percent of ads specified a preferred gender, and 77 percent listed both a minimum and maximum age. We also document a new stylized fact we call the age twist in gender profiling: firms' explicit gender requests shift dramatically away from women and towards men when firms are seeking older (as opposed to younger) workers. While some of this twist can be attributed to employers' age-dependent requests for (female) beauty and (male) leadership, the timing of the shift suggests that young women's movement into childbearing also plays a role.

Keywords: search; beauty; Internet; Mexico; China; age; discrimination; gender; recruiting; screening (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J63 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2016-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-lab and nep-pke
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published - published as 'The Age Twist in Employers' Gender Requests: Evidence from Four Job Boards' in :Journal of Human Resources, 2020, 55 (2), 428-469

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