Polo And Sailing Boost Men’s Resumes, Hurt Women’s

A new study showed that signals of wealth and privilege on resumes – like listing polo or sailing as a hobby – gave male applicants for exclusive law firm jobs a distinct advantage in the hiring process. That advantage disappeared if the exact same resume was handed in by a woman. In an article published in the American Sociological Review, Lauren Rivera, a sociologist at Northwestern University, and colleague Adrás Tilcsik of the University of Toronto, sent 300 fake resumes to premiere U.S. law firms. Men who indicated privilege on their resumes got a call-back rate of 16 percent, four times that for similarly privileged women and less-privileged men and women combined. Men with wealthy backgrounds were likely to be seen as a good fit for the culture of the law firm, while less-privileged applicants were seen as better suited for public-service and government positions than the corporate world.

In fact, signs of privilege actually penalized women: practicing lawyers asked to review the applications viewed privileged women as being the least committed to their careers. In interviews with hiring attorneys, privileged women were described as lawyers who were secretly “looking for a husband,” or “biding time” before leaving their careers altogether. Meanwhile, less-privileged women were seen as “hungry,” and were expected to work hard because they had “law-school debt to pay” and “mouths to feed.” “I think a lot of employers have a hard time with gender discrimination and seeing how it’s related to biases about motherhood,” Rivera said.