Childbearing Age and Gender Discrimination in Hiring Decisions : A Large-Scale Field Experiment

We conduct a large-scale field experiment in China to investigate the effect of being of childbearing age on gender discrimination in the labor market. We send 35,713 fictitious resumes to real job postings on a major Chinese online recruitment platform for jobs in four leading cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, which vary in the length of maternity leave. We send applications for positions advertised in the male-dominated field of information technology (IT), the female-dominated field of accounting (ACC), and the mixed-gender field of human resources (HR). We systematically vary the age and gender of the job applicants and record callbacks for interviews. To accurately mimic the job application process in the Chinese labor market, we do not disclose the applicants’ family status. We find that women of childbearing age are subject to discrimination in the field of IT, a problem that also exists in HR and ACC, particularly in Beijing and Shanghai. There is no obvious discrimination against women of childbearing age in Guangzhou or Shenzhen, where maternity leave is longer. In the aggregate, the evidence indicates that women of childbearing age face statistical discrimination that prevents them from obtaining equal employment opportunities