Discrimination in the Labor Market: Where Young Men Have Bad Chances

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Women's job, men's job?

A study looked at the impact of gender when applying.

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Photo: Luis Alvarez / Getty Images

When it comes to gender differences in the world of work, it is usually women who suffer disadvantages. On average, they earn less and less often have a steep career; the boards of large companies are still mostly men. A new study now shows that there could be at least a part of the world of work in which discrimination works the other way round: According to this, young men are less often invited to job interviews when they apply for positions in supposedly female professions.

In an experiment, a group of researchers from the universities in Oslo, Madrid and Amsterdam sent fictitious applications that were identical in content, but differed in terms of personal characteristics of the applicants - including gender.

In total, the researchers submitted a good 21,000 applications in six countries: Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, the United Kingdom and the USA.

They then asked for which of the applications they received positive feedback, for example in the form of an invitation to an interview.

No discrimination against female applicants, but male applicants

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In the evaluation, the researchers differentiated between professions in which men primarily work - such as software development or sales - and those in which there are more women - such as sales or accounting. Their result: In none of the countries was there any systematic discrimination against women, not even in the male-dominated professions. The researchers found the only discrimination based on gender, on the other hand, among male applicants. For jobs that are considered to be dominated by women, they received less feedback than the women who applied. Only in the USA and Norway could these differences not be determined.

The researchers conclude from this that women are less disadvantaged in the world of work than is generally assumed.

Traditional ideas, in which women are primarily responsible for raising children and the household, while the man earns the money, are now apparently outdated, according to the study's conclusion.

“We need to re-examine our assumptions that women are always the disadvantaged group.

Gender-based discrimination is obviously more complex, "says study author Gunn Elisabeth Birkelund from the University of Oslo.

Limited informative value

However, the authors themselves point out the limited informative value of their investigation. The fictitious applicants: inside the experiment were still at the beginning of their careers: They were all between 22 and 26 years old and all had four years of professional experience. In addition, the examination only covers the very first step in a profession - the written application. "Discrimination in terms of recruitment, income or promotion opportunities later in professional life can therefore not be ruled out," the study therefore says.

The choice of professions that were examined in the experiment is also limited.

The researchers selected the following typical female jobs: receptionist, saleswoman and payroll clerk.

The male-dominated counterparts were software developers, salespeople, and cooks.

The occupational fields in which the proportion of women is particularly high in Germany - according to the Federal Employment Agency, mainly social and health professions - do not occur.

Conversely, fields such as construction or transport are also lacking in the supposedly male professions.

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