Visibility as Vulnerability: Transgender Passing Privilege and Hiring Discrimination

A resume audit study design will be leveraged to estimate hiring discrimination against transgender women who may (1) indirectly disclose their identity via a male-to-female name change and/or (2) not "pass" as cisgender (i.e., it is clear from their headshot that they were assigned male at birth). Outcomes for these treated applicants will be compared to a control applicant who (1) may or may not disclose a female-to-female name change and (2) always "passes" as cisgender.

2025-05-14

2026-01-31

Positive employer response to job applications is the outcome of interest. Emails and phones will be set up and carefully tracked to identify applicants for whom employers respond.

Two additional outcomes may also be identified (given feasibility): (1) whether employers open a worker's application materials and (2) how long these materials are kept open for.

Employer response will be viewed as "positive" if they contact the applicant and either offer an interview, request additional information from the applicant, or request the applicant contact them.

Weekly, job posting data will be scraped from the major job posting website in Germany (Bundesagentur für Arbeit) in the occupations of interest, and a list of target job postings will be created (omitting companies we have applied for previously, omitting temporary work from employment agencies, omitting postings where the application occurs on an external job board or portal). A team of research assistants will aid in generating pairs of ficitious, randomized, matched applications to e-mail to employers and securing additional job posting information (like what e-mail to send applications to).

Employer response will be carefully tracked via phone and email. Upon contact, employers will be promptly contacted, where applicants will let them know they have recently found work and are therefore no longer interested in the position. The outcome of interest is whether the employer responds positively—that is, whether they offer the applicant an interview, request additional information about qualifications, request the applicant contacts them back, etc.

A version of the experiment may be conducted where trackable links are sent in place of PDF attachments in emails. Whether or not this occurs will depend on the results of a pilot test (will enough employers click on such links, especially in the context of Germany people are extremely vigilant about data protection and privacy).

Randomization is done in office by a computer. In particular, the computer program by Lahey and Beasley (2009) is used to construct resume randomization logic. A detailed breakdown is included in the pre-analysis plan.

Randomization occurs at the firm (job posting) level.

Yes

9,000 pairs of matched applications sent to the same number of job postings

18,000 total applications

3,000 per treatment arm (pass as cisgender and disclose MtF name change / do not pass as cisgender and disclose MtF name change / do not pass as cisgender and do not disclose a name change).

2025-05-13 (Pre-Analysis Plan).pdf