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Cited by 29Names, Identity, and Discrimination ResearchLabour Market and MigrationLabor market dynamics and wage inequality

Gender and Racial Discrimination in Hiring Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from a Field Experiment of Accountants, 2018–2020

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Chavez, Koji, Weisshaar, Katherine, Cabello-Hutt, Tania·2022·Work and Occupations
DOI 10.1177/07308884221094539PMC PMC9047608
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Abstract

In this article, we ask whether macro-level changes during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic relate to changes in the levels of discrimination against women and Black job-seekers at the point of hire. We develop three main hypotheses: that discrimination against women and Black job-seekers increases due to a reduction in labor demand; that discrimination against women decreases due to the reduced supply of women employees and applicants; and that discrimination against Black job-seekers decreases due to increased attention toward racial inequities associated with the Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of 2020. We test these hypotheses using a correspondence audit study collected over two periods, before and during the early COVID-19 pandemic, for one professional occupation: accountants. We find that White women experience a positive change in callbacks during the pandemic, being preferred over White men, and this change is concentrated in geographic areas that experienced relatively larger decreases in women's labor supply. Black women experience discrimination pre-pandemic but receive similar callbacks to White men during the pandemic. In contrast to both White and Black women, discrimination against Black men is persistent before and during the pandemic. Our findings are consistent with the prediction of gender-specific changes in labor supply being associated with gender-specific changes in hiring discrimination during the COVID-19 pandemic. More broadly, our study shows how hiring decision-making is related to macro-level labor market processes.

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  • The finding that there is an interplay between occupational gender composition and race parallels results of ongoing studies that investigate both race and gender to explain hiring discrimination.

    “Second, our finding that there is an interplay between occupational gender composition and race parallels the results of ongoing studies that investigate both race and gender to explain hiring discrimination (Bertrand and Mullainathan 2004;Chavez, Weisshaar, and Cabello-Hutt 2022;Deming et al. 2016).”

    From Getting a Foot in the Door: A Meta-Analysis of U.S. Audit Studies of Gender Bias in Hiring (2025) · cites this paper as Chavez, Weisshaar, and Cabello-Hutt 2022

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Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Chavez, K., Weisshaar, K., & Cabello-Hutt, T.
Affiliations
  • Indiana University Bloomington (US)
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (US)
Corresponding author
Chavez, Koji
ORCID
Venue
Work and Occupations
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2022-04-27
Volume
49
Issue
3
Pages
275-315
ISSN
  • 0093-9285 (ISSN-L)
  • 0730-8884
  • 1552-8464
DOI
10.1177/07308884221094539
PMC
PMC9047608
OpenAlex
W4293237006
Cited by
29
References
5
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 1
FWCI
8.23
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)
Locations
  • Work and Occupations (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Carolina Digital Repository (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) (submittedVersion)
  • UNC Libraries
Funders
  • Carolina Population Center at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Seed Grant Award/P2C HD050924)
  • Russell Sage Foundation (1908-17342)
  • Center for Research on Race & Ethnicity in Society, Indiana University (Faculty Seed Grant Award)
  • Division of Social and Economic Sciences (1948237)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Names, Identity, and Discrimination Research
  • Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Labour Market and Migration
  • Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Labor market dynamics and wage inequality
Keywords
gender discrimination in hiring, racial discrimination in hiring, COVID-19 pandemic, accountants, callbacks, labor demand, Black Lives Matter protests, Black women, Black men, women in accounting, macroeconomic shocks, correspondence audit

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