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Title: Gendering the Job: Networks and Recruitment at a Call Center

Citation Type: Journal Article

Publication Year: 2005

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Abstract: Gender segregation of jobs plays a central role in current research on gender and labor markets, and understanding the mechanisms driving gender segregation has become a key focus of study. While the literature on gender segregation of jobs often invokes gender sorting mechanisms that operate pre-hire, the data that are used to empirically examine these processes are almost always collected on post-hire populations. This lack of fit between theory and data make it dangerous to conclude anything about the presence or absence of pre-hire gender sorting mechanisms on the basis of post-hire data. In this paper, we examine the workings of pre-hire mechanisms that are alleged to sort men and women into different jobs. Despite the theoretical importance of these mechanisms, very little empirical evidence has ever been offered on the pre-hire stages of the hiring process. We study a research setting that is unusually well suited for identifying and empirically isolating these social processes: we analyze unique data on the recruitment and hiring process starting with the pool of applicants for an entry-level customer service representative (CSR) job at a telephone customer service center of a large bank. We find that all of the factors we examinedpre-application choices, pre-application gender homophily of networks, and screeners choices--played significant and distinct roles in the gender segregation of the CSR job. Furthermore, we demonstrate that making inferences about pre-hire processes on the basis of post-hire data can be misleading. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and methodological implications of our findings.

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Authors: Fernandez, Roberto M.; Sosa, Lourdes M.

Periodical (Full): American Journal of Sociology

Issue: 3

Volume: 111

Pages: 859-904

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure

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