The Racialized and Gendered Workplace: Applying an Intersectional Lens to a Field Experiment on Hiring Discrimination in Five European Labor Markets

Abstract

We draw on a field experiment conducted in five European countries to analyze hiring discrimination on the basis of gender and race. We adopt an intersectional perspective and relate existing theories on gender and racial discrimination to recent work on the gendered stereotype content of different races. We find that employers prefer hiring white women over men for female-typed jobs. By contrast, women of color do not have any advantage over men of the same race. Moreover, black and Middle Eastern men encounter the strongest racial discrimination in male-typed jobs, where it is possible that their stereotyped masculinity, made salient by the occupational context, is perceived as threatening. Overall, we argue that the employment chances of applicants of different gender and racial backgrounds are highly dependent on their perceived congruence (or lack thereof) with the feminine or masculine traits of the job they apply to.