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    When Gender Discrimination Is Not About Gender
    22 Jan 2018Working Paper Summaries

    When Gender Discrimination Is Not About Gender

    by Katherine B. Coffman, Christine L. Exley, and Muriel Niederle
    Gender discrimination in a typically male workplace is not necessarily driven by misogyny. Rather, employers are less willing to hire applicants associated with a lower performing group-even if that group is defined by a demographic characteristic other than gender.
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    Author Abstract

    We use an experiment to show that employers prefer to hire male over female workers for a male-typed task even when they have identical resumes. Using a novel control condition, we document that this discrimination is not specific to gender. Employers are simply less willing to hire a worker from a group that performs worse on average, even when this group is instead defined by birth month, a non-stereotypical characteristic. A reluctance to discriminate emerges if workers share the gender or birth month of the worker from the worse-performing group, but even then, a small "excuse" counters this reluctance

    Paper Information

    • Full Working Paper Text
    • Working Paper Publication Date: December 2017
    • HBS Working Paper Number: HBS Working Paper #18-054
    • Faculty Unit(s): Negotiation, Organizations & Markets
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    Katherine B. Coffman
    Katherine B. Coffman
    Piramal Associate Professor of Business Administration
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