Gender Discrimination in Hiring of Recent Graduates: The Results of an Experiment

Research on gender discrimination in the labor market has traditionally done the most focus on researching the wage gap between men and women, while discrimination in hiring has long remained poorly reported. Moreover, in existing research, the least studied professions are those which belong to the highly skilled sector. In this work it is planned to conduct an experiment to assess gender discrimination in hiring young specialists in economic specialties using as field two cities: Moscow and Yekaterinburg. As part of the field experiment design (correspondence test) from January to October 2023 we sent out resumes to employers offering jobs in the field business analytics, financial and investment analysis, auditors and economists. We assessed the resulting data array through several specifications of the probit model, providing some evidence of gender discrimination on the Russian labor market for recent graduates. In particular, we established the fact the presence of discrimination against women during selection for positions, implying frequent business trips or long-term relocation to anothercity. Also, we have not established any evidence of discrimination towards both men and to women, depending on the city, skills requested, type of position and level proposed payment. We believe that the results of our work may be useful to people who implementing social policy in Russia, as well as all researchers who focus on problems of gender discrimination in the labor market.