Friday 16 August 2013

Nazia, Mariam, Alison, and the Labour Market

In a field experiment, a British research group sent 2961 applications to 987 advertised job vacancies between November 2008 and May 2009. For each vacancy, three applications were sent: one with a "white name" and two with different minority ethnic group names (African, Caribbean, Chinese, Pakistani/Bangladeshi), e.g. Nazia Mahmood, Mariam Namagembe and Alison Taylor. There was an even split in the proportion of the applications that were male and female. The researchers made sure that the fake applicants did not differ in their qualification but only in their names and the associated ethnicity. While the levels of discrimination between male and female applicants were similar, there were high levels of name-based discrimination. A ratio of 1.74 was found, in other words, 74% more ethnic minority than non-minority applications needed to be sent to get the same number of positive responses.

 

Wood, M., Hales, J., Purdon, S., Sejersen, T. & Hayllar, O. (2009) A test for racial discrimination in recruitment practice in British cities. A report of research carried out by National Centre for Social Research on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions.
Photo by Clifford Coffin (1949) via

8 comments:

  1. Thanks for the share, Laura! The photo works so well with the text.

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    1. I wasn't sure the link between photo and text would be clear, so I'm really happy to hear that one works well with the other. Thank you for your feedback, Kenneth!

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  2. I can recognize Alison's bathing cap anywhere! ;-)

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  3. Abbey Winterburn17 August 2013 at 09:01

    Clifford Coffin, isn't it!? My favourite photographer!

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    1. Oh, how nice. Yes, it is Clifford Coffin - as Derek pointed out "the" Vogue-man.

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  4. Indeed, the Vogue-man he was!

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