Working Paper: NBER ID: w17453
Authors: Peter J. Kuhn; Kailing Shen
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, and suggests that rising skill demands may be a potent deterrent to explicit discrimination of the type we document here. 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: gender discrimination; job ads; employer search model; China
JEL Codes: J16; J63; J71
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| increases in job skill requirements (J24) | reduce the tendency to gender-target job ads (J79) |
| higher application processing costs (L97) | increase the likelihood of gender restrictions (J16) |
| higher variance in applicant productivity and job skill levels (D29) | decrease such restrictions (F69) |
| increases in a firm's preferences for men in a job (J79) | raise the share of ads explicitly requesting male applicants (J79) |
| increases in a firm's preferences for men in a job (J79) | reduce those requesting female applicants (J79) |
| job skill requirements (J24) | firms' gender preferences (J79) |
| larger firms (L25) | prefer men (J16) |
| state-owned enterprises (L32) | prefer men (J16) |
| foreign-owned firms (F23) | prefer women (J16) |