Gender and unemployment: a vignette experiment on recruiters' hiring intentions in sex-segregated occupations

ABSTRACT This study investigates the interplay between occupational sex composition and gender-specific unemployment patterns from the perspective of demand-side mechanisms, an area where existing research is scant. Experimental evidence suggests that unemployment is often perceived more negatively for men than for women in hiring decisions. However, it is unclear how the disadvantages from unemployment and those associated with applying for gender-atypical jobs combine to (re)produce gender inequality in reemployment chances. Utilizing secondary data from a multicountry vignette experiment, we examined how recruiters across different sex-segregated occupational fields assess male and female job applicants with unemployment experience. We found gender differences in the effect of unemployment, with disadvantages for men increasing with the share of women in an occupation. While the reverse pattern was observed in occupations with lower shares of women, the gender difference in unemployment effects was somewhat larger for men in female-dominated occupations. This was due to occupational variation in unemployment effects for both genders. However, focusing on applicants meeting the minimum skill requirements, only men's unemployment effect varied across occupational fields. Thus occupational sex composition is an important factor in recruiter evaluations of unemployed applicants, intensifying the challenge of reemployment, particularly for men in female-dominated occupations.