Can Group Identity Explain Gender Gap in Recruitment Process?

Despite evidence of the gender wage gap in favor of men, aggregate findings from correspondence studies show that women are more likely than men to be invited for a job interview (Gornall and Strebulaev, 2018). We hypothesize that the predominance of women among recruiters may explain this somewhat puzzling finding; recruiters may favor applicants of their own gender. We use the data from a large-scale correspondence study in Russia to test this hypothesis. As expected, we find that female applicants are more likely to receive callbacks for interview. We also see that in our sample the majority of contact persons responsible for the recruitment process are female. More importantly, we find that if recruiter and applicant are of the same gender, then the likelihood that the applicant will be invited for an interview increases. These findings taken together point out the gender favoritism at the hiring stage in the labor market.