Doctoral Dissertation Research: An Audit Study to Understand Hiring Practices

尽管过去几十年取得了重大进展，但女性在工作场所的成就仍然落后于男性。性别差异部分是由于职业隔离造成的，即男女往往在不同行业从事不同的、往往不平等的工作的社会形态。事实上，研究表明，在男女之间资源分配不平等方面，职业隔离甚至比工作内部差异更为重要。虽然有重要的证据表明，女性和男性确实做出了不同的职业选择，但关于雇主在性别方面的实际招聘做法的研究有限。因此，我们对美国性别歧视的程度及其在职业隔离中所起的作用的理解存在差距。通过收集美国各地雇主实践的数据，本论文将调查白领和工人阶级职业中基于性别的雇佣歧视，并指出与之相关的特征。分析将探讨工人阶级的雇佣歧视是否像许多学者推测的那样加剧，因此，这是与白领工作相比，工人阶级工作中女性相对较少、职业隔离模式更明显的根本原因。本研究还将考察劳动力市场条件，如就业增长模式和区域差异，是否会影响社会封闭机制的程度，这是招聘文献中一个重要但尚未得到充分研究的领域。最后，该研究将检验更高水平的人力资本是否可以弥补在招聘过程中归因于地位（即性别）的不平等。这项研究通过评估择优在招聘实践中的作用，推进了性别分层和组织理论，并对就业招聘和全国法律政策产生了至关重要的直接影响。利用简历审计研究，该研究将调查美国五个地区八个州招聘性别歧视的存在及其相关背景，并研究学历如何缓和白领和工人阶级职业中的性别歧视。简历审计测试为招聘歧视提供了令人信服的数据，因为两个候选人的工作选择、资格和生产力水平是不变的，只有性别发生了变化。该项目以2000对匹配的简历为基础，对男女应聘者的回调率进行分析，并按职业、劳动市场状况、职业性别比例、地区等进行分析。这项研究可以对歧视和工作产生许多直接影响。计划在学术和公共论坛上广泛传播这些发现，以最大限度地发挥这些影响。此外，将为从事本项目的本科生提供宝贵的研究经验。他们将直接参与数据收集，并有机会根据初步数据撰写本科论文。除了了解招聘歧视之外，他们还将能够在未来的工作或研究生院的机会中利用他们的研究和写作经验。

Despite significant progress over the past few decades, women's workplace achievements continue to lag behind those of men. Gender disparities are due, in part, to occupational segregation - the social pattern in which men and women occupy different, often unequal jobs, frequently in different industries. Indeed, research indicates that occupational segregation is even more important than within-job disparities in the unequal distribution of resources among men and women. While there is significant evidence to suggest that women and men do make different occupational choices, limited research exists on employers' actual hiring practices in regard to gender. Thus, there are gaps in our understanding of the extent of gender discrimination in the United States and the role it plays in occupational segregation. By collecting data on employer practices across the United States, this dissertation will investigate hiring discrimination on the basis of gender in both white-collar and working-class occupations and pinpoint characteristics associated with it. Analyses will address whether hiring discrimination is heightened in working-class jobs, as many scholars speculate, and thus, is a fundamental reason for relatively few women and starker occupational segregation patterns in working-class jobs, compared to white-collar jobs. This study will also examine whether labor market conditions, such as job growth patterns and regional variation, affect the degree of social closure mechanisms, an important yet understudied area in the hiring literature. Lastly, the research will examine whether higher levels of human capital can compensate for inequality derived from ascribed statuses (i.e., sex) during the hiring process. This research advances gender stratification and organizational theories by evaluating the role that merit plays in hiring practices and has crucial, direct implications for employment hiring and nationwide legal policies.Utilizing a resumé audit study the research will investigate the presence of, and contexts associated with, hiring gender discrimination in eight states across five U.S. regions, and examine how qualifications moderate gender discrimination in white-collar and working-class occupations. Resumé audit tests provide compelling data for hiring discrimination because job choices, qualifications and productivity levels are held constant between the two candidates, only the gender changes. This project is based on 2,000 matched pairs of resumés and will conduct analyses on the callback rates for the male and female candidates and analyze results by occupation, labor market conditions, occupational sex ratios, and regions. There are many direct impacts that can develop from this research on discrimination and work. There are plans to widely disseminate the findings in both academic and public forums where these impacts can be maximized. Additionally, valuable research experience will be provided to undergraduate students working on this project. They will be directly involved in data collection, and will have the opportunity to write an undergraduate thesis out of preliminary data. In addition to learning about hiring discrimination, they will be able to leverage their research and writing experience in future job or graduate school opportunities.