Measuring Labor Market Discrimination: A Correspondence Audit Study in Egypt

This study will randomize the following characteristics of applicants:
· Gender (male/female)
· Marital status (unmarried/married)

2022-06-15

2023-02-01

Whether applicants receive a callback.

Whether and what phone or email follow-up occurred from the employer will be the key outcome. Callbacks and their details will be collected for each fictitious applicant (at their phone or email address). The key outcome will be a callback that signals the possibility of hiring (asking for an interview, interview on the spot, asking for additional information, offering the position). When a position was specifically designated as for one gender or marital status only, the other excluded identities will be considered not to have callbacks (although we will be able to distinguish between applied, no call back and excluded, no call back in the data).

Type of callback, monthly wage.

We will look primarily at the outcome of receiving a callback, but also analyze the distribution of employers’ responses in callbacks by gender and marital status.

A secondary outcome will be the expected monthly wage (calculated as the average of the minimum and maximum if a range is given). We will model this outcome as log wages, since coefficients can then be interpreted in approximately percentage terms. This outcome will only be available for a sub-sample of job postings with wage data posted and will be calculated only for positions that receive a callback.

This is a resume correspondence study, randomizing applicant characteristics.

This study will randomize the following characteristics of applicants:
· Gender (male/female)
· Marital status (unmarried/married)

Randomization in office, done by a computer (in Stata).

Job posting.

No

1,500-2,500 postings

6,000-10,000 resumes

The resumes will be equally divided across treatment arms.

Pre-analysis plan labour market discrimination audit study 2022.05.24 CGK.docx

Do employers discriminate against married women? This research submitted fictitious resumes to online job postings in Egypt, randomizing gender and marital status. More job postings explicitly required men (14 per cent) than women (4 per cent). Despite the gender discrimination in postings, women were only slightly less likely to receive callbacks than men, with only a small difference between single and married women. Differences in callbacks by sex and marital status were not statistically significant. Women and especially married women were, however, particularly likely to be asked for more information rather than scheduled for an interview. The findings suggest that the low employment rate of women and especially married women in Egypt, at least in the segment of the labour market we are able to examine, is not primarily due to employer discrimination at the callback stage.

Caroline Krafft, Do employers discriminate against married women? Evidence from a field experiment in Egypt, Cairo: International Labour Organization, 2023

https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---africa/---ro-abidjan/---sro-cairo/documents/publication/wcms_900839.pdf