The Case of Sex and Nonbinary Gender Identities in a Range of Low Skill Occupations
Abstract: Thousands of randomly generated fictitious resumes were submitted in pairs to job postings in male-dominated and female-dominated occupations to investigate hiring discrimination. I analyze the impact on applicants who disclose "they/them" pronouns and those whose name signals they are the minority sex in a dominated occupation. Additionally, I explore the cumulative effects of intersecting minoritized identities--applicants who use "they/them” pronouns and also represent the minority sex in an occupation. I find that in this context, applicants with multiple minoritized identities face additive discrimination, indicating that biases build linearly with each additional marginalized identity.
To be published in AEA Papers & Proceedings (2025)
A field experiment on pronoun disclosure and hiring discrimination
Current Version: available here
Abstract: Nonbinary people have a gender identity that falls outside the male-female binary. To investigate hiring discrimination against this group, thousands of randomly generated fictitious resumes were submitted to job postings in pairs where the treatment resume contained pronouns listed below the name and the control resume did not. Two treatments were considered: nonbinary "they/them” and binary "he/him” or "she/her” pronouns congruent with implied sex. Hence, discrimination is estimated against nonbinary and presumed cisgender applicants who disclose pronouns. Results show that disclosing "they/them" pronouns reduces positive employer response by 5.4 percentage points. There is also evidence that discrimination is larger (approximately double) in Republican than Democratic geographies. By comparison, results are inconclusive regarding discrimination against presumed cisgender applicants who disclose pronouns; if discrimination does exist, it is of lower magnitude than discrimination against nonbinary applicants who disclose pronouns.
Transgender "passing privilege" and labor market discrimination
Abstract: Transgender people experience worse labor market outcomes compared to similar cisgender peers; recently, research has found causal evidence of discrimination against this group in various settings. I propose a two-stage correspondence field experiment involving fictitious workers with A.I.-generated headshots, where the extent to which individuals "pass" as cisgender is experimentally manipulated. In addition, while some transgender workers will indirectly disclose their identity, others will not. These workers will apply to real job postings in Germany, where applicants typically include headshots on their resumes. With this experiment, I aim to answer three primary research questions. First, do transgender women experience hiring discrimination in terms of employer attention (i.e., the extent to which employers acquire applicant information) and response (i.e., interview requests or similar)? Second, do transgender women who pass as cisgender experience "passing privilege" (i.e., a lower discrimination magnitude) compared to those who do not pass? Finally, what mechanisms contribute to passing privilege, between: inadvertent identity disclosure, level of attractiveness, and employer "taste" for passing?
A quasi-experimental analysis
with Philip Oreopoulos
A Randomized Control Trial with mobile location data
with Eva Vivalt
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