Job Networks and Gender in Malawi

Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) conducted a competitive recruitment drive for survey enumerators to test how job referrals affect the recruitment of men and women. Treatments for initial applicants was cross-randomized across two dimensions:

1) Restricting Referrals by Gender:
- Initial applicants may refer men only
- Initial applicants may refer women only
- Initial applicants may refer either gender

2) Finder's Fee Incentive:
- Initial applicants receives a fixed fee of 1000 Malawi Kwacha ($1=153 MWK) for their referral, regardless of referral quality
- Initial applicants receives a fixed fee of 1500 Malawi Kwacha for their referral, regardless of referral quality.
- Initial applicants receives a performance incentive (a guaranteed 500 MWK with the potential to earn an additional 1300 MWK, for a total of 1800 MWK, if the referral attained a certain threshold)

2011-06-30

2011-08-01

percentage of women referred, percentage of men referred, candidate quality, referral qualification rate

Candidate quality: minimum requirements: secondary school certificate, fluency in the local language (Chichewa), and English reading and oral comprehension. Additional: data collection experience, good math skills, and basic computer skills.

Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) conducted a competitive recruitment drive for survey enumerators to test how job referrals affect the recruitment of men and women. Enumerator positions were advertised by hanging flyers. Initial applicants attended a half-day interview process which included a written exam and a mock interview, where the candidate surveyed an actor playing the role of a typical respondent. At the conclusion of the application process, initial applicants were asked to refer a friend or relative to apply for the position and were offered a finder’s fee. Two dimensions were randomized: 1) Whether candidates could refer a man, a woman, or either, and 2) whether the finder's fee was fixed or based on the performance of their referral. Applicants who performed above the median qualified for future positions and were informed that they would be called as positions open. Participants were limited to those individuals who had never worked for IPA.

Randomization was conducted using a computerized random digit generator to independently assign individual initial applicants to treatment and control by (1) referral gender restriction, and (2) finder's fee incentive.

900 initial applicants

No

No clusters

900 job candidates

300 men only, 300 women only, 300 either gender

We use a field experiment to show that referral-based hiring has the potential to disadvantage qualified women, highlighting another potential channel behind gender disparities in the labor market. Through a recruitment drive for a firm in Malawi, we look at men’s and women’s referral choices under different incentives and constraints. We find that men systematically refer few women, despite being able to refer qualified women when explicitly asked for female candidates. Performance pay also did not alter men’s tendencies to refer men. In addition, women did not refer enough high-quality women to offset men’s behavior.

Note: This article is available at the Journal of Labor Economics.

Beaman, Lori, Niall Keleher, and Jeremy Magruder. "Do Job Networks Disadvantage Women? Evidence from a Recruitment Experiment in Malawi." Journal of Labor Economics, November 2017.

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/693869