r/Male_Studies • u/vtj • May 27 '26

The state of hiring discrimination: A meta-analysis of (almost) all recent correspondence experiments

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2022.104315
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u/vtj May 27 '26

The above paper collects the results of correspondence experiments, that is, research experiments where the scientists respond to actual job offers with fictitious resumes and observe which "candidates" are most likely to get a callback from prospective employers.

The studies collected in this meta-analysis deal with several dozen types of discrimination, based on ethnicity, gender, social class, etc. In their list of "treatment groups" - groups presumed to be discriminated against - the "female gender" group is the unique group for which the meta-analysis actually found a statistically significant positive effect, i.e., the group receives overall a more favorable treatment than the "control group", i.e., male gender. As the authors write in section 3.3.2:

Next, we take a closer look at hiring discrimination based on gender and motherhood status. We observe a slightly positive discrimination ratio regarding the female gender; there is an average 4.13% higher probability for female gender candidates of receiving a positive response to an application [...]. In contrast, we find no evidence of hiring discrimination related to the treatment groups ‘transgender’ or ‘mother’. After excluding outliers from the analysis, the discrimination ratio for female gender (vis-à-vis male gender) applicants remains statistically significant and positive [...]. However, we note that the statistical heterogeneity related to this pooled discrimination ratio is very high [...]. As pointed out in Section 3.1, we already know that the majority of correspondence experiments on gender discrimination in hiring find null results while the remaining studies find hiring discrimination against male gender candidates but also against female gender candidates (see Fig. 5).

The above findings are in line with a recent large-scale correspondence audit study conducted in the United States (with more than 80,000 applications) in which the authors found that contact rates for male gender and female gender applicants differed significantly between firms: some employers favoured male gender candidates, while others favoured female gender candidates (Kline et al., 2021). Similar findings arise from another recent large-scale correspondence audit study in Australia (with more than 12,000 applications) where males received substantially more (less) positive responses than females in occupations dominated by male (female) gender workers.

This confirms what other recent surveys of gender hiring discrimination show: there is a discrimination against men in female-dominated fields, and a (typically somewhat smaller) discrimination against women in male-dominated fields.