Homosexuality's Signalling Function in Job Candidate Screening: Why Gay is (Mostly) OK

Philippe Sterkens, Axana Dalle, Joey Wuyts, Ines Pauwels, Hellen Durinck and Stijn Baertf

No 1090, GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)

Abstract: To explain the mixed findings on hiring discrimination against homosexual applicants, we explore the perceptual drivers behind employers' evaluations of gay men and lesbian women. Therefore, we conduct an extensive vignette experiment among 404 genuine recruiters, for which we test systematically-selected perceptions theoretically associated with homosexual job candidates in earlier studies. We find causal evidence for distinct effects of sexual identities on candidate perceptions and interview probabilities. In particular, interview probabilities are positively (negatively) associated with the perception of lesbian women (gay men) as being more (less) pleasant to work with compared to heterosexual candidates. In addition, interview chances are negatively associated with the perception of gay men and lesbian women as being more outspoken. Furthermore, our data align well with the idea of a concentrated discrimination account, whereby a minority of employers who privately hold negative attitudes towards homosexual individuals are responsible for most instances of hiring discrimination.

Keywords: homosexuality; signalling; statistical discrimination; taste-based discrimination; hiring experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Working Paper: Homosexuality's Signalling Function in Job Candidate Screening: Why Gay Is (Mostly) OK (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:glodps:1090

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