NOVAFRICA Seminar: Livia Alfonsi, Harvard Business School – Whom You Know, Whom You Recommend, and The Role of Referrals in Gender Occupational Segregation

In our upcoming NOVAFRICA Research Seminar, we are pleased to welcome Professor Livia Alfonsi, from Harvard Business School, on Wednesday, 27th May, at 11:30 AM (Lisbon time), in Room B002, at the Nova School of Business and Economics, Carcavelos campus. Who will present his paper:

“Whom You Know, Whom You Recommend, and The Role of Referrals in Gender Occupational Segregation”

Abstract

Occupational gender segregation persists even among workers with identical credentials. We study whether and how employee referral decisions contribute to this persistence using a high-stakes field experiment with 750 skilled workers across eleven occupations in Uganda. Our design embeds randomized candidate profiles in real workplace referral decisions, separating two channels: network composition (whether workers can access gender counter-stereotypical candidates) and a referral gender bias (whether they choose to refer them). Gender counter-stereotypical candidates – women in male-dominated occupations and men in female-dominated ones – face a 25 percentage-point referral penalty relative to otherwise identical peers: 29 points when women are the counter-stereotypical candidate and 18 points for when men are. The gap is not explained by network constraints: among workers with contacts of both genders, the penalty persists. These penalties reflect lower perceived likability, expected task ability, anticipated job enjoyment, and second order beliefs about employer preferences – channels that are particularly pronounced for women trying to work in male-dominated occupations. A calibrated dynamic network model shows that employee referral bias increases steady-state occupational segregation by 8.2–9.2 percent in a conservative baseline; when referrals play a larger role in job finding, the bias can account for more than a quarter of observed segregation. Referral preferences are thus a powerful mechanism sustaining gender gaps in labor markets.

Find out more about this and other NOVAFRICA seminars here.

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