Do Employer Preferences Contribute to Sticky Floors?

Abstract

The authors investigate the importance of employer preferences in explaining sticky floors, the pattern in which women are less likely, as compared to men, to start to climb the job ladder. The authors perform a randomized field experiment in the Belgian labor market and test whether hiring discrimination based on gender is heterogeneous by whether jobs imply a promotion (compared to the applicants’ current position). The findings show that women receive 33% fewer interview invitations when they apply for jobs that imply a first promotion at the functional level. By contrast, the results show that their hiring chances are not significantly affected by the authority level of the job.