Taryn versus Taryn (she/her) versus Taryn (they/them): A Field Experiment on Pronoun Disclosure and Hiring Discrimination

This repository stores current files associated with the above working paper by Taryn Eames, a PhD Candidate in economics at U of T.

Abstract: Nonbinary people have a gender identity that falls outside the male-female binary. To investigate hiring discrimination against this group, thousands of randomly generated fictitious resumes were submitted to job postings in pairs where the treatment resume contained pronouns listed below the name and the control resume did not. Two treatments were considered: nonbinary "they/them” and binary "he/him” or "she/her” pronouns congruent with implied sex. Hence, discrimination is estimated against nonbinary and presumed cisgender applicants who disclose pronouns. Results show that disclosing "they/them" pronouns reduces positive employer response by 5.4 percentage points. There is also evidence that discrimination is larger (approximately double) in Republican than Democratic geographies. By comparison, results are inconclusive regarding discrimination against presumed cisgender applicants who disclose pronouns; if discrimination does exist, it is of lower magnitude than discrimination against nonbinary applicants who disclose pronouns.

Acknowledgements: This study could not have been completed without tireless research assistance from Siu Lun Cheong, Hanru He, YuHui Li, Minh Thuy Phi, and Sarah Zahir. I am grateful to Philip Oreopoulos who helped me access the resources needed to complete this project. I thank Philip Oreopoulos and David Price for invaluable suggestions and feedback throughout the study. I also thank Peter Cziraki for a Research Fellowship associated with this study and Andràs Tilcsik for helpful advice. The pre-analysis plan for this experiment can be found on the American Economic Association Randomized Control Trial Registry (Trial #11183). Ethics approval was obtained from the University of Toronto Social Sciences, Humanities and Education Research Ethics Board (Human Research Protocol #44259).

Pre-Analysis Plan: The pre-analysis plan and populated pre-analysis plan are publicly available here: https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/11183