Does pay disclosure in job offers remove gender differences in pay estimations? Evidence from an experiment with students and job seekers in the context of Austria

Summary

The research paper "Does pay disclosure in job offers remove gender differences in pay estimations? Evidence from an experiment with students and job seekers in the context of Austria" by Yilmaz and Brandl (2025) investigates the effectiveness of various pay disclosure practices in mitigating gender disparities in pay estimations. The study is motivated by the goal of closing the gender pay gap through improved salary knowledge, especially for women, and addresses the limited understanding of employers' practices in this regard. The methodology involved a lab-in-the-field experiment conducted in Austria. The experiment utilized two distinct samples: 385 graduate students and a replication with 242 real job seekers. Participants were asked to estimate salaries for several job offers, which featured different common pay statements used by employers in Austria. This design allowed the researchers to compare how various forms of pay disclosure impact male and female pay expectations under controlled conditions. The findings reveal that the effectiveness of pay disclosure practices in removing gender differences varies significantly. For the student sample, gender differences in pay estimations disappeared only when a specific salary range was disclosed in the job offer. Other employer practices, such as merely stating minimum salaries or indicating negotiation options, did not resolve the gender disparities. The replication of the experiment with real job seekers further supported this, demonstrating that while gender differences vanished for some practices, they persisted notably when job offers mentioned "excess payment (or overpay) options," a common practice in Austria. When salary offers were based on minimum salaries, initial gender differences in estimates remained, irrespective of whether the salary was negotiable. A significant implication is that to effectively reduce the gender gap in salary estimations within asymmetric labor markets, employers should not only include negotiation options but crucially, also specify the salary range in their job offers. The study suggests that legislative efforts aimed at closing the gender pay gap would be most impactful if they encouraged employers to consistently display salary ranges.