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Inequality in Hiring: Gendered and Classed Discrimination in the Labor Market

Yavorsky, Jill Evelyn
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1492542664842056

Abstract Details

2017, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Sociology.
Occupational segregation between men and women is a leading contributor to economic gender inequality. Although occupational segregation has declined in recent decades, most integration progress occurred in white-collar, not working-class, occupations. Yet virtually no scholarship exists on how employers’ social closure practices such as hiring discrimination may vary by occupational class and contribute to uneven integration patterns. Therefore, two important questions remain: Has gender-based discrimination in early job-access points become polarized and concentrated among working-class contexts? And how do other occupational dimensions embedded within the broader class structure also affect employers’ hiring practices? Using data derived from comparative correspondence audits of 3,156 jobs (N=6,302 resumes) and content coded analyses of over 3,000 job-postings, this dissertation analyzes variations in early hiring practices in white-collar and working-class jobs across two important dimensions: 1) sex compositions (male- or female-dominated jobs); 2) gender-typing (masculine- or feminine-typed jobs based on gendered attributes in job advertisements). I also consider how these two occupational dimensions uniquely intersect to affect discrimination across class structure. First, I investigate whether the sex compositions of occupations influence the presence of gender-based, hiring-related discrimination against male and female applicants and whether such discrimination varies across occupational class. My findings suggest a polarization of early sorting mechanisms in which discrimination against female applicants is concentrated in male-dominated working-class jobs. In contrast, employers discriminate against male applicants applying for female-dominated jobs across the occupational hierarchy. Second, based on content analysis of job ads, I investigate whether hiring-related discrimination on the basis of gender varies depending on whether a job (more specifically, a job ad) is masculine-typed or feminine-typed, and whether occupational class exacerbates or reduces discrimination by the gender-typing of jobs. Similar to findings above, I find that discrimination against female applicants is more prevalent in masculine-typed working-class jobs and that discrimination against male applicants in feminine-typed jobs occurs in both classes. Third, I consider how the combination of these two occupational dimensions, sex composition and gender-typing, affects discrimination across class structure. I find that discrimination compounds across occupational dimensions that directionally align (e.g., feminine-typed and female-dominated), holding true for male-applicants in both occupational classes and female applicants in working-class jobs. Importantly, I also find that female applicants experience disadvantages in particular white-collar occupations that emphasize masculine-typed attributes—challenging findings by other prior audit studies that assess discrimination only at the job level. These findings build on theories of discrimination by conceptualizing hiring-related discrimination as a multi-dimensional process, contingent upon gendered and classed dimensions of work. This study identifies key contexts that ameliorate or exacerbate hiring inequality and in doing so, identifies a key discrimination process that goes unobserved in most studies—hiring-related discrimination based on gender-typing of jobs. This project provides some of the first pieces of direct evidence that working-class women experience greater social closure barriers during early entry points into both male-dominated and masculine-typed job—jobs that typically pay higher and have greater benefits. Discrimination, at this early point, could contribute to stalled economic gains among working-class women and correspondingly, rising inequality between lower- and higher-educated women. In conclusion, this project develops a more complex and nuanced conceptualization of hiring-related discrimination than prior studies and offers multiple unique findings and literature contributions.
Vincent Roscigno (Advisor)
Rachel Dwyer (Advisor)
Claudia Buchmann (Committee Member)
172 p.
Sociology
Class; Discrimination; Female-dominated Occupations; Field Experiment; Gender; Gender Inequality; Hiring Discrimination; Hiring practices; Male-dominated Occupations; Occupational Class; Occupational Segregation; Resume Audit; Working-class; White-collar

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Yavorsky, J. E. (2017). Inequality in Hiring: Gendered and Classed Discrimination in the Labor Market [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1492542664842056

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Yavorsky, Jill. Inequality in Hiring: Gendered and Classed Discrimination in the Labor Market. 2017. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1492542664842056.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Yavorsky, Jill. "Inequality in Hiring: Gendered and Classed Discrimination in the Labor Market." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1492542664842056

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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