The Resume Paradox: Greater Language Differences, Smaller Pay Gaps
Joshua R. Minot, Marc Maier, Bradford Demarest, Nicholas Cheney,, Christopher M. Danforth, Peter Sheridan Dodds, and Morgan R. Frank

TL;DR
This study investigates how differences in resume language by gender relate to the gender pay gap, revealing that greater language differences are associated with smaller pay gaps and potential wage parity improvements.
Contribution
It introduces an analysis of worker self-representation in resumes and its relationship to gender pay disparities, highlighting the importance of textual data in understanding employment inequities.
Findings
Language differences explain 11% of gender pay gap variation.
Greater language differences correlate with lower gender pay gaps.
Doubling language difference increases female wages by approximately $2,797 annually.
Abstract
Over the past decade, the gender pay gap has remained steady with women earning 84 cents for every dollar earned by men on average. Many studies explain this gap through demand-side bias in the labor market represented through employers' job postings. However, few studies analyze potential bias from the worker supply-side. Here, we analyze the language in millions of US workers' resumes to investigate how differences in workers' self-representation by gender compare to differences in earnings. Across US occupations, language differences between male and female resumes correspond to 11% of the variation in gender pay gap. This suggests that females' resumes that are semantically similar to males' resumes may have greater wage parity. However, surprisingly, occupations with greater language differences between male and female resumes have lower gender pay gaps. A doubling of the language…
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Taxonomy
TopicsLabor Movements and Unions · Labor market dynamics and wage inequality · Gender Diversity and Inequality
