BY: DORIS WEICHSELBAUMER
University of Linz
Department of Economics
Document: Available from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection:
http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=305140
Other Electronic Document Delivery:
http://www.economics.uni-linz.ac.at/members/weichsel/w
ork/paper/sexualorientation.PDF
SSRN only offers technical support for papers
downloaded from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection
location. When URLs wrap, you must copy and paste
them into your browser eliminating all spaces.
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