Testing for Discrimination against Lesbians of Different Marital Status: A Field Experiment

Abstract

In this paper, I conduct a correspondence testing experiment to examine sexual orientation discrimination against lesbians in Germany. I sent applications from four fictional female characters in response to job advertisements in Munich and Berlin: a heterosexual single, a married heterosexual, a single lesbian, and a lesbian who is in a “same‐sex registered partnership.” While single lesbians and lesbians in a registered partnership are equally discriminated in comparison to the heterosexual women in the city of Munich, I found no discrimination based on sexual orientation in Berlin. Furthermore, for a subset of the data we can compare the effects of a randomized versus a paired testing approach, which suggests that under certain conditions, due to increased conspicuity, the paired testing approach may lead to biased results.