English Female Callback Premium
RCTReview
Female job applicants with traditional English names experience a significant hiring advantage over male applicants with English names, but this gender callback premium completely disappears for female applicants holding non-English ethnic names.
Picture this
Think of a nightclub entry line where security grants female guests priority access, but only if they are wearing the venue's official branded wristband. If a female guest arrives wearing a foreign wristband, the door bouncer revokes the gender preference and subjects her to the standard long wait.
What the evidence says
Resumes with English female names received a 4.9 percentage point higher callback rate than English male names (p < 0.01). However, no female callback premium existed for Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, or Greek female applicants compared to their male ethnic counterparts.
- Who was studied
- N = 12,910 resumes submitted to 3,225 job postings across 20 occupation categories in Toronto and Montreal, Canada.
- How
- Randomized field experiment / resume audit study comparing interview callback rates for male versus female applicants across English, Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, and Greek name categories.
What to do
Standardize candidate selection criteria to evaluate gender and ethnic equity across intersectional demographic pairings rather than examining gender in isolation.
From the source
"The callback rates for the Toronto and Montreal sample are estimated to be 4.9 percentage points higher for English named females compared to English named males. The premium arises for Type 0 resumes but not the other resume types."
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