Assessing the role of gender in hiring: a field experiment on labour market discrimination

The under-representation of females within the labour market, particularly in managerial roles, has sparked a local and global debate on whether women, mostly mothers, face negative discrimination. This study distinctly adopts a field experiment methodology to investigate the presence of gender discrimination and the motherhood penalty against higher education (Bachelor, Master’s, and Doctoral degree) females seeking full-time employment in the labour market at the initial stage of the recruitment process, being the call-back to the interview. This study took place in Malta, which was characterised by a low unemployment figure, complemented by strong economic growth at the time, thus enabling a proper analysis of the possible presence of gender-based discrimination even when labour demand is high. Field experiments were chosen as the methodology. This involved sending pairs of fictitious job applications belonging to two fictional male and female candidates (identical to each other except for the demographic characteristics) in response to job vacancies. Then, the employers’ behaviour was recorded to assess whether they engaged in discriminatory practices. The analysis of the replies through the use of econometric models shows that there is no statistically significant evidence that employers engage in discrimination at the call-back stage of the recruitment process. Furthermore, during this distribution period, no particular age class was favoured or discriminated against, a finding that contradicts the idea that young female workers are discriminated against due to their maternal responsibilities. Such a study contributes to the growing literature on the subject, by being the first study done in Malta to scientifically test whether the significant gender employment gap present in various industries in Malta is attributed to negative discrimination against women or mothers with young children.