The Age Twist in Employers’ Gender Requests: Evidence from Four Job Boards / Miguel Delgado Helleseter, Peter Kuhn, Kailing Shen.

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Helleseter, Miguel Delgado

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Material type: Text

TextSeries: Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) ; no. w22187.Publication details: Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2016.Description: 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white)Subject(s):

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Abstract: When permitted by law, employers sometimes state the preferred age and gender of their employees in job ads. We study the interaction of advertised requests for age and gender on one Mexican and three Chinese job boards, showing that firms' explicit gender requests shift dramatically away from women and towards men when firms are seeking older (as opposed to younger) workers. This 'age twist' in advertised gender preferences occurs in all four of our datasets and survives controls for occupation, firm, and job title fixed effects. Together, observed characteristics of job ads (including the job title) can account for 65 percent of the twist; within this 'explained' component, just three factors: employers' requests for older men in managerial positions, and for young women in customer contact and helping positions, account for more than half. The latter requests are frequently accompanied by explicit requests for physically attractive candidates. Based on its timing, the remaining portion of the twist, which occurs within job titles, appears to be connected to a differential effect of parenthood on firms' relative requests for men versus women.

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Item type	Home library	Collection	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
Working Paper	Biblioteca Digital	Colección NBER	nber w22187 (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Not For Loan

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April 2016.

When permitted by law, employers sometimes state the preferred age and gender of their employees in job ads. We study the interaction of advertised requests for age and gender on one Mexican and three Chinese job boards, showing that firms' explicit gender requests shift dramatically away from women and towards men when firms are seeking older (as opposed to younger) workers. This 'age twist' in advertised gender preferences occurs in all four of our datasets and survives controls for occupation, firm, and job title fixed effects. Together, observed characteristics of job ads (including the job title) can account for 65 percent of the twist; within this 'explained' component, just three factors: employers' requests for older men in managerial positions, and for young women in customer contact and helping positions, account for more than half. The latter requests are frequently accompanied by explicit requests for physically attractive candidates. Based on its timing, the remaining portion of the twist, which occurs within job titles, appears to be connected to a differential effect of parenthood on firms' relative requests for men versus women.