same-sexers in the labor market

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Wed Jul 3 15:40:22 PDT 2002


"Sexual Orientation Discrimination in Hiring"

BY: DORIS WEICHSELBAUMER

University of Linz

Department of Economics

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Paper ID: Linz Economics Working Paper No. 00-21

Date: October 2001

Contact: DORIS WEICHSELBAUMER

Email: Mailto:doris.weichselbaumer at jk.uni-linz.ac.at

Postal: University of Linz

Department of Economics

Altenbergerstrasse 69

A-4040 Linz, AUSTRIA

Phone: ++43-732-2468-8240

Fax: ++43-732-2468-9679

ABSTRACT:

Little research has been done to examine discrimination against

gays and lesbians in the labor market. Badgett (1995) was the

first to investigate labor market outcomes of gays and lesbians

using a random data set. While her results suggested lower

earnings for lesbians compared to heterosexual females, later

studies indicated the contrary and indeed consistently

documented an income premium for lesbian women. Considering the

wage penalty we observe for most social minorities in the labor

market (women, ethnic minorities), this result appears as

striking. The apparently "privileged" labor market situation can

be reconciled with the existence of labor market discrimination,

however. Problems like sample selection and unobserved

heterogeneity - in particular lesbians' violation of

stereotypical female gender roles - might be responsible for

their higher earnings. To investigate whether discrimination

against lesbians actually does exist, a labor market experiment

is conducted. Job applications of candidates, who are equivalent

in their human capital but differ in their sexual orientation,

are sent out in response to job advertisements. Furthermore, to

test whether increased masculinity affects labor market

outcomes, the applicants differ in their perceived gender

identity. While results show a strong negative effect for

lesbian orientation, gender identity does not have a significant

overall impact on hiring chances.

Keywords: discrimination, experimental economics, sexual

orientation



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