Paternalistic discrimination
Women in Bangladesh struggle to access the labour market in general and in male-dominated occupations in particular, despite recent progress in education and training. This project identifies a novel form of labour market discrimination, "paternalistic discrimination".
Paternalistic discrimination refers to the preferential hiring of male candidates to protect female candidates from jobs perceived as harmful or difficult for women. To test for paternalistic discrimination, employers are enlisted in Bangladesh as hiring consultants to make hiring decisions for a real one-day job during the evening shift.
Experimentally the perceived costs of the job are reduced by informing treated employers that all hired workers are provided free safe transport home after the shift — while keeping everything else constant. This allows the experiment to test whether employers discriminate paternalistically, for instance, whether women are hired less often when the employer perceives high costs for the worker.
