Haluk Levent- Istanbul Kemerburgaz University
Seyit Mümin Cilasun- Atılım University
Binnur Balkan- Bilkent University
ERF Workshop on The Political Economy of Contemporary Arab Societies
Beirut, Lebanon August 24-25, 2016
www.erf.org.eg
The Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) has been advised by the Office...
Correspondence Studies on Gender, Ethnicity and Religiosity Discrimination in Turkey
1. CORRESPONDENCE STUDIES ON
GENDER, ETHNICITY AND RELIGIOSITY
DISCRIMINATION IN TURKEY
Binnur Balkan
Bilkent University
Seyit Mümin Cilasun
Atılım University
Haluk Levent
Istanbul Kemerburgaz
University
2. Introduction
• Discrimination is one of the important sources of
inefficiency in different markets.
• We could observe discrimination in labor market,
product markets, housing markets among the
others and there could be multiple steps to
discrimination in these markets.
• For example in the labor market, discrimination
could be observed in
– hiring
– wage setting
– or promotion stages
3. Introduction
• Additionally, people might be discriminated in the
labor market by their
– Age
– Gender
– Race / Ethnicity
– Religion
– Sexual orientation
– or appearance in the labor market and it is possible to
find studies examining all these types of
discrimination in the literature.
4. Introduction
• In this study, we will try to identify hiring stage
labor market discrimination in Turkey
– under gender, ethnicity and religiosity aspects
– by employing a novel approach of correspondence
audits
– through online job application portals, which are
widely used by employers and employees in
Turkey.
5. Correspondence Audits
• In a labor market correspondence audit,
seemingly similar fictional resumes are sent out
to real job openings as pairs.
• After the application process, interview requests
or callbacks from prospective employers are
recorded for the each applicant in the pair.
• The fictitious applicants are very similar except a
single trait, which is the focus of correspondence
audit study.
6. Contribution
• We aim to contribute existing literature in several aspects
with this study.
• Not much ethnicity studies on the natives of the countries,
this study will be one of the very first
• No gender discrimination study in a Muslim country, where
labor market dynamics for women could be quite different
• One of the few study to create a discrimination measure on
the level of religiousness
• Methodological Contribution: In this type of studies, it is
hard to achieve enough observations. We are planning to
solve this problem by monitoring online job application
portal activity.
7. Literature – Gender I
• There is a growing literature on hiring discrimination in terms of gender,
employing correspondence testing method.
• Riach and Rich (2006) -UK
– used a matched pair of applicants and applied to vacancies for engineers,
computer analyst programmers, secretaries and accounting positons
– net discrimination in favor of women in vacancies for computer analyst
programmers, secretaries and accounting positons and in favor of men in
engineering jobs.
• Petit (2007) - France
– prepared separate resumes for males and females, with or without children,
of age 25 or 37.
– sent matched pair applicants to each vacancy for high and five low skill
occupations in administrative and commercial areas often in the financial
sector
– discrimination against young women in high skilled administrative jobs.
8. Literature – Gender II
• Booth and Leigh (2010) - Austria
– focused on female-dominated professions (waitstaff, data-entry, customer service, and sales
jobs)
– a call-back of 1.28 in favor of women.
• Carlsson (2011) - Sweden
– sent matched paired applications for positions of construction workers, sales assistants, IT
professionals, high school teachers, restaurant workers, drivers, accountants, nurses, pre-
school teachers and cleaners.
– female applicants have slightly higher probability to receive a call back compared to men for
the pooled sample for all occupations,
– in male dominated professions male applicants have a slight (insignificant) advantage.
• Zhou et al. (2013) - China,
– sent CVs to accounting, IT, marketing and secretary positions
– statistically significant discrimination in all the jobs
– the level of discrimination is 9% in favor of men for accounting applications
– 20% and 40.2% in favor of women in marketing and secretary applications, respectively.
9. Literature – Ethnicity I
• Most of the ethnicity studies mainly compare the immigrants and non-immigrants in order to
analyze the discrimination in hiring stage.
• Carlsson and Rooth (2007) – Country: Sweden – Minority: Middle Eastern
– sent matched paired applications for positions of construction workers, sales assistants,
IT professionals, high school teachers, restaurant workers, drivers, accountants, nurses,
cleaners and teachers in different branches
– They found that 29 percent of all employers are discriminated against the male with
Arabic sounding names and discrimination is more common in lower level of
occupations
• Drydakis and Vlassis (2010) – Greece – Albenian
– the probability for Albanians to receive an interview is lower than for Greeks by 21.4
percentage points.
• Kaas and Manger (2011) –Germany - Turks
– sent two similar applications, one with a Turkish-sounding and one with a German-
sounding name to each of 528 advertisements for student internships.
– the call back probability for German names is 14 percent higher for all firms
– when the sample is restricted to small firms, probability rises to 24 percent.
10. Literature – Ethnicity II
• Baert et al. (2011) - Belgium – Turks
– compared to natives, applicants with Turkish sounding name are equally often
invited to a job interview if they apply for occupations for which vacancies are
difficult to fill,
– but they have to send twice as many applications for occupations for which
labour market tightness is low.
• McGinnity and Lunn (2011) – Ireland – African, Asian, German
– applicants with Irish names are over twice as likely to be called to interview as
are candidates with an African, Asian or German name
– discrimination rate does not vary between these minority groups.
• Booth et al. (2012) – Australia – Indigenous, Italian, Chinese and Middle Eastern
– ethnic minority applicants need to apply for more jobs in order to receive the
same number of interviews.
– Italians (a more established migrant group) discriminated less than Chinese
and Middle Easterners (who have arrived more recently).
11. Literature – Ethnicity III
• Midtbøen (2016) – Norway - Pakistani
– second generation of immigrants
– applicants with Norwegian names on average are 25 percent more likely to receive
a call back for a job interview than applicants with Pakistani names.
– the effect of ethnic background on employment probabilities is larger among men
than women and larger in the private sector than in the public sector.
• Arai et al. (2016) – Sweeden – Arabic
– contrary to what is often assumed about the interaction of gender and ethnicity,
Arabic men face stronger discrimination than Arabic women.
• Maurer-Fazio (2012) – China - Mongolian, Tibetan, and Uighur (different than the
aforementioned studies, not immigrants)
– found significant differences in the callback rates by ethnicity and
– these differences vary systematically across ethnic groups.
– state-owned firms are significantly discriminates less than privately-owned firms.
12. Literature – Religion
• The effect of religion on hiring discrimination is hard to study since most of the time religion and
ethnicity are intertwined.
• Banerjee et al. (2009) - India
– the role of caste and religion in India’s software and call-center sectors.
– sent 3160 fictitious résumés in response to 371 job openings.
– no discrimination against Muslims.
• Wright et al. (2013) - New England, US
– applicant from any religion received about one-quarter fewer callbacks compared to the control
group (had no religious identification in his/her résumé)
– discrimination is more evident for Muslims. They received one-third fewer callbacks compared to
control group
– discrimination is also evident for atheists, Catholics and pagans.
• Wallace et al. (2013) - American South
– applicants who expressed a religious identity were 26 percent less likely to receive a callback.
– While, Muslims, pagans, and atheists suffered the highest levels of discrimination, Catholics
experienced moderate levels, evangelical Christians encountered little and Jews received no
significant discrimination.
13. Turkey: Lordoğlu & Aslan
• “While making the job contract and speaking about date of
start, I told that I would like to use my off-days on
weekdays. When asked for its reason, I told that I wanted to
pay visits to my brother who is a political prisoner on these
off-days. They told me that they would contact me back.
But after a while I realized that it wouldn’t be possible to
start working”.
• “On my CV, I stated English and Russian as my foreign
languages. When the manager who had learned that I
speak these languages was about to hire me, I told him that
I also speak Kurdish as a third language if it is accepted by
them. He folded the job application form; gave it back to
me and told me that they had nothing to do with Kurds”.
14. Turkey: Lordoğlu & Aslan
• “I applied for a job to work as a security personnel. We
were five in total. We were interviewed individually.
The questions I was asked were about whether I pray,
fast, smoke or drink alcohol. I told them that I don’t
smoke or drink alcohol but as I am an Alevit, I don’t
perform the namaz or fast. Later I learned that the
other four applicants were all hired. I wasn’t. The fact
that I was from Tunceli made them question me on
these issues. The deputy governer who was helping me
to get a job stated the situation exactly like this. I don’t
apply to such positions anymore…”
15. Methodology
Correspondence Audits Again
• In a labor market correspondence audit,
seemingly similar fictional resumes are sent out
to real job openings as pairs.
• After the application process, interview requests
or callbacks from prospective employers are
recorded for the each applicant in the pair.
• The fictitious applicants are very similar except a
single trait, which is the focus of correspondence
audit study.
16. Methodology
Correspondence Audits
• Our pairs will be
– Turkish man vs. Turkish woman for gender study
– Turkish man vs. Kurdish man for ethnicity study
– Turkish man vs. religious Turkish man for religiosity
study
• In order to produce different measures, we will
send group of four resumes to chosen job
openings
– Turkish man, Turkish woman, Kurdish man and
Kurdish woman
18. Methodology
Correspondence Audits
• Name and surname selection
• Occupation/position selection
• Resume qualities selection
• Creating online applicant accounts
• Composing fictional resumes
• Sending resumes to chosen vacancies
• Recording callbacks from prospective
employees
19. Methodology
Step 1: Name / Surname Selection
• The name of the applicants is the main source of
variation in correspondence audits.
• In order to identify source of the discrimination
correctly, names should reflect an affiliation to
the group of interest but nothing more than that
to potential recruiters.
• At this point, we designed a survey in the name
selection stage to ensure that we are signaling
the affiliation, which we aim to signal.
20. Methodology
Step 1: Name / Surname Selection
• We gathered commonly used female and male names
for
– Turks
– Kurds
– Religious people
• Then we surveyed people and ask them to assign traits
to our names, which could be religious, ethnic or
gender.
• After the survey, we collected the names, which are
identified with a single group and identified by
majority of our subjects as belonging that single group.
21. Methodology
Step 1: Name / Surname Selection
• For the surnames, we have chosen some of the
heavily used surnames in Turkey.
• That common surnames do not signal any
geographical, ethnic or religious affiliation since
they are commonly used by the different groups
of society.
• Another benefit of using commonly used
surnames, it makes harder for recruiters to search
candidates online if they have such intentions.
22. Methodology
Step 1: Name / Surname Selection
• Finally, we randomly matched surnames and
names to create fictional applicant identities.
• In that way, we could use any name and
surname more than once
• and we were able to choose the strongest
names in each category in terms of their
identity signaling power.
23. Methodology
Step 2: Occupation /Position Selection
• In order to achieve desired number of
applications, we choose the occupations and
positions according to number of vacancies.
• We focus on entry level jobs, which does not
require much of experience or references
from the previous employers.
• We focus on two different type of positions,
one is for high school graduates and the other
one is for college graduates.
24. Methodology
Step 3: Resume Qualities Selection
• Gender discrimination related component
• Ethnicity discrimination related component
• Birth place supporting component
• Education
• Address
• School
• Age
• Prior work experience
Common
Components
26. Methodology
Step 4: Creating online applicant accounts
• Online applicant accounts are created in one of the
Turkey’s heavily used job search sites.
• First, a name – surname combination is assigned to a
phone number – email account. To do that, email
accounts are created for all the fictitious surname –
name combinations.
• Resumes and email information are person specific in
order to avoid detection of fictitious accounts.
• However, given the job first sites do not have any
detection mechanism for phone numbers, every ten
applicant from the same group share a mobile number
in our study.
27. Methodology
Step 5: Composing Fictional Resumes
• Fictional resumes are formed with the
randomly assigned names and resume
characteristic on our job application portal.
• Since it is important to assign comparable
characteristics to all matched pairs, we
randomly assign everything in each resume.
• The only ground rules were ethnicity – birth
place compatibility and age – education
compatibility in our resume creation step.
28. Methodology
Step 6: Sending resumes to chosen vacancies
• At this stage of the project, online job search portals
will be browsed regularly and a matched pairs of
resumes will be sent to chosen vacancies. Vacancy
choice will depend on occupation – position selection.
• At the first stage, one resume from each of the
following group will be sent out to job openings:
– Turkish man
– Kurdish man
– Turkish woman
– Kurdish woman
• The following step will focus on religiosity.
29. Methodology
Step 7: Recording callbacks from prospective employers
• Assigned phones and mails will be monitored
regularly.
• Moreover, job search sites will be monitored
and any activity on the applications will be
recorded. This step will also constitute our
methodological contribution.
• In the end, the employers will be notified that
the applicant is interested in other jobs at the
moment.
