Gendering the Job: Networks and Recruitment at a Call Center1

By Roberto M. Fernandez, M. Sosa, L. Bailyn, Peter Bearman, John Carroll, Tiziana Casciaro, E. Castilla, Adair Crosley, Paula England, Christopher Jencks and 10 more. American Journal of Sociology, 2005

279 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Understanding the mechanisms driving gender segregation has become a key focus in research on gender and labor markets. While the literature often invokes gender‐sorting mechanisms that operate prehire, the data used to study these processes are usually collected on posthire populations. This article examines the workings of prehire mechanisms determining job sex segregation. Analyzing unique data on the recruitment and hiring process for customer service representatives at a telephone service center, all of the factors examined—preapplication choices, gender homophilous networks, and screeners’ choices—play significant roles in the gender segregation of this job. The analyses also show that making inferences about prehire processes on the basis of posthire data can be misleading. The authors conclude by discussing the theoretical and methodological implications of these findings.

Subfields: Gender Studies, Public Administration, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b92b4b935d5fda46ad7920108bafbb9a7abccec2

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Citations in the corpus

Buying science and selling science: gender differences in the market for commercial science (2007, background): “As Fernandez and Sosa (2005) noted in the hiring arena, the various supply- and demand-side processes “potentially feedback on one another” and have “complex interdependencies.””
The Employment Relationship and Inequality: How and Why Changes in Employment Practices are Reshaping Rewards in Organizations (2013, unknown): “…Relationship and Inequality † 31 D ow nl oa de d by [ Pe nn sy lv an ia S ta te U ni ve rs ity ], [ Fo rr es t B ri sc oe ] at 1 0: 49 2 9 Ja nu ar y 20 13 2000; Drentea, 1998; Fernandez & Sosa, 2005; Hanson & Pratt, 1991; Kmec, 2005; Padavic & Reskin, 2002; Reskin, McBrier, & Kmec, 1999).”
Paying More to Get Less (2011, background): “This analysis cannot distinguish the determinants of selection into these jobs, because there is no information on the applicant pool from which the workers were picked (Fernandez and Sosa, 2005).”
Gender-role Incongruity and Audience-based Gender Bias: An Examination of Networking among Entrepreneurs (2020, background): “…Fernandez, 2014) and many common labor market practices, including job referral programs within organizations (Fernandez, Castilla, and Moore, 2000; Fernandez and Sosa, 2005) and organizations’ use of hiring intermediaries to fill job vacancies (Fernandez-Mateo, 2007; Fernandez-Mateo and King,…”