Description:

"Why Don't Women Get Job Referrals? Evidence from a Recruitment Experiment in Malawi" by Lori Beaman, Assistant Professor of Economics and IPR Fellow

Abstract: Women are less likely to use friends and relatives as part of their job search. Therefore, the use of social connections in job referrals may disadvantage female job seekers, contributing to women’s worse labor market outcomes. Beaman and her colleagues designed a field experiment in Malawi where applicants took part in a competitive selection process to become qualified for future surveyor positions with a local firm. The researchers investigated whether skilled women are in fact left out of social network-based referrals and whether this gender gap is attributable either to relative difficulties in identifying qualified women, taste-based discrimination, or statistical discrimination. They find that women do not benefit as much from job referrals as men. The constraint on attracting high quality female candidates through referrals appears to be twofold: Men prefer not to refer women, and women make poorer quality referrals when they do refer women.