Gender Discrimination in Job Ads: Evidence from China*

We study explicit gender discrimination in a population of ads on a Chinese Internet job board. Gender-targeted job ads are common, favor women as often as men, and are much less common in jobs requiring higher levels of skill. Employers' relative preferences for female versus male workers, on the other hand, are more strongly related to the preferred age, height, and beauty of the worker than to job skill levels. Almost two thirds of the variation in advertised gender preferences occurs within firms, and one third occurs within firmoccupation cells. Overall, these patterns are not well explained by a firm-level animus model, by a glass-ceiling model, or by models in which broad occupational categories are consistently gendered across firms. Instead, the patterns suggest a model in which firms have idiosyncratic preferences for particular job-gender matches, which are overridden in skilled positions by factors such as thinner labor markets or a greater incentive to search broadly for the most qualified candidate. JEL Codes: J16, J63, J71. Copyright 2013, Oxford University Press.

[1]  M. Beblavý,et al.  Using Internet Data to Analyse the Labour Market: A Methodological Enquiry , 2014, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[2]  V. Hlasny.  Four Pillars of Job Applicant Screening in China , 2014 .

[3]  Eva O. Arceo-Gómez,et al.  Race and Marriage in the Labor Market: A Discrimination Correspondence Study in a Developing Country , 2014 .

[4]  Jeff E. Biddle,et al.  Wage discrimination over the business cycle , 2013, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[5]  Ulf Rinne,et al.  Anonymous job applications in Europe , 2012, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[6]  Vera Brenčič.  Wage Posting: Evidence from Job Ads (L’Annonce Du Salaire : Résultats À Partir Des Annonces D’Emplois) , 2012 .

[7]  Rembert De Blander,et al.  Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion , 2011 .

[8]  Jonathan Guryan,et al.  Studying Discrimination: Fundamental Challenges and Recent Progress , 2011 .

[9]  Roland G. Fryer.  Racial Inequality in the 21st Century: The Declining Significance of Discrimination , 2010 .

[10]  Roland G. Fryer.  Racial Inequality in the 21st Century: The Declining Significance of Discrimination. NBER Working Paper No. 16256. , 2010 .

[11]  Peter Kuhn,et al.  Employers&Apos; Preferences for Gender, Age, Height and Beauty: Direct Evidence , 2009 .

[12]  A. Banerjee,et al.  Marry for What? Caste and Mate Selection in Modern India , 2009 .

[13]  Joshua D. Angrist,et al.  Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion , 2008 .

[14]  Masoud Asgharian,et al.  Covariate Bias Induced by Length-Biased Sampling of Failure Times , 2008 .

[15]  Rachel E. Kranton,et al.  Identity, Supervision, and Work Groups , 2008 .

[16]  Guido Menzio,et al.  A Theory of Partially Directed Search , 2007, Journal of Political Economy.

[17]  Lynn Greiner,et al.  Manual labor , 2006, NTWK.

[18]  Yuval Salant,et al.  A model of choice from lists , 2006 .

[19]  Kevin Lang,et al.  Racial Discrimination in Labor Markets with Posted Wage Offers , 2005 .

[20]  Sandra E. Black,et al.  Importing Equality? The Impact of Globalization on Gender Discrimination , 2002, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[21]  Claudio Michelacci,et al.  Incomplete Wage Posting , 2002, Journal of Political Economy.

[22]  C. Goldin.  The Rising (and then Declining) Significance of Gender , 2002 .

[23]  Sandra E. Black,et al.  The Division of Spoils: Rent-Sharing and Discrimination in a Regulated Industry , 2001 .

[24]  Shi Li,et al.  Economic transformation and the gender earnings gap in urban China , 2000 .

[25]  Xin Meng,et al.  Sectoral gender wage differentials and discrimination in the transitional Chinese economy , 2000 .

[26]  A. Greenwald,et al.  Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: the implicit association test. , 1998, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[27]  W. Darity,et al.  Evidence on Discrimination in Employment: Codes of Color, Codes of Gender , 1998 .

[28]  Johngseok Bae,et al.  Overt Employment Discrimination by Multinational Firms: Cultural and Economic Influences in a Developing Country , 1998 .

[29]  C. Pierret,et al.  Employer Learning and Statistical Discrimination , 1997 .

[30]  Espen R. Moen.  Competitive Search Equilibrium , 1997, Journal of Political Economy.

[31]  David Neumark,et al.  Sex Discrimination in Restaurant Hiring: An Audit Study , 1995 .

[32]  Dale T. Mortensen,et al.  Job Creation and Job Destruction in the Theory of Unemployment , 1993 .

[33]  E. Groshen.  Sources of Intra-Industry Wage Dispersion: How Much Do Employers Matter? , 1991 .

[34]  G. Ridder,et al.  Job requirements and the recruitment of new employees , 1991 .

[35]  C. Goldin.  Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women , 1990 .

[36]  John M. Barron,et al.  EXTENSIVE SEARCH, INTENSIVE SEARCH, AND HIRING COSTS: NEW EVIDENCE ON EMPLOYER HIRING ACTIVITY , 1985 .

[37]  B. Reskin.  Sex segregation in the workplace : trends, explanations, remedies , 1985 .

[38]  John M. Barron,et al.  Employer Search: The Interviewing and Hiring of New Employees , 1985 .

[39]  F. Crosby,et al.  Recent unobtrusive studies of Black and White discrimination and prejudice: A literature review. , 1980 .

[40]  Francine D. Blau.  Equal pay in the office , 1979 .

[41]  G. Becker,et al.  The Economics of Discrimination. , 1957 .

[42]  Marianne Bertrand,et al.  New Perspectives on Gender , 2011 .

[43]  Robert C. Miller,et al.  CCP Estimation of Dynamic Discrete Choice Models with Unobserved Heterogeneity , 2008 .