Discrimination in the workplace is a phenomenon that is constantly growing in our societies where we always look for more productivity and where we find it difficult to accept change. Discrimination is considered to occur when the employer uses elements other than those related to work to make decisions about an employment contract. This situation can be taken into account from the interview to the dismissal. No employee may be punished, dismissed or the subject of a measure based on discrimination. In recruitment situations, in the vast majority of cases employers don’t rely only on the occupational characteristics of applicants (skills, performance, experiences…) but also rely heavily on their personal attributes (age, gender, ethnic origin, sexual orientation…). It would therefore seem that accessing to employment will depend more on the subjective attributes rather than on the actual productive capacities of the individual. Discrimination is easier in recruitment situations because the employer has to make a choice, eliminating applicants because of their individual attributes is a saving of time and energy for him.
Psychology tends to look separately at the different social categories that can potentially be discriminated against. Yet, in real life, it is common for individuals to belong to several categories that are being stigmatized simultaneously. This is the case of a woman of black colour, for example, who has two socially disadvantaged categories. The accumulation of multiple stigmas increases in most cases the penalization experienced by individuals. For example, women of colour, who belong to two stigmatized social categories (women and people of colour), will be more disadvantaged than men of colour, who belong to a privileged social category (men) and another stigma (people of colour). This perspective is called intersectionality or double sentence. Discrimination in employment can therefore be amplified or, on the contrary, diminished according to the social groups to which individuals are identified. Belonging simultaneously to two social categories stigmatized in society, as is the case for example for senior women, would penalize them even more during recruitment than just being senior or being a woman. A study showed that gender inequalities in the job market increased after being 50 years old, confirming that women are further disadvantaged when they combine these two stigmas (being a woman and being old).
In the context of my Master’s thesis, I conducted a study whose objective was to highlight the fact that the more stigma (related to his social characteristics) an individual accumulates, the more the discrimination he will suffer will be significant. This study focused on the intensity of this discrimination in recruitment situations. The method used was that the participants, who were recruiters, were led to believe that they were needed as part of a project supports for job seekers so that they could judge the profile of applicants and give them advice on how to improve it. Fictional resumes were created for this purpose, the applicant’s age, gender and employment status varied. The participant only saw one resume and had to judge the suitability of the profile with the desired position, the applicant’s recrutability, competence and warmth. He then had to justify his answers and give advice to improve the applicant’s resume. 102 people from 21 to 60 years old participated. The results showed that the more stigma the applicant accumulated, the more he was discriminated.
To put in a nutshell, it can indeed be said that according to the principle of intersectionality, the discrimination suffered at work is all the more important according to individual characteristics (age, sex, origin…) socially stigmatized of the person and especially according to the fact that they add up.
Bibliography :
- Anglaret, D. & Bernard, S. (DARES) (2003). Chômage et retour à l’emploi après 50 ans : une moindre exposition au chômage, des difficultés pour retourner en emploi. Premières synthèses, 45, 1.
- Cole, E. R. (2009). Intersectionality and Research in Psychology. American Psychologist, 64(3), 170-180.
- Gallot, F., Noûs, C., Pochic, S. & Séhili, D. (2020). L’intersectionnalité au travail. Travail, genre et sociétés, 44, 25-30. https://doi.org/10.3917/tgs.044.0025
- Guerfel-Henda, S. & Peretti, J.-M. (2009). Le senior, objet de discrimination à l’embauche ?. Humanisme et Entreprise, 5(295), 73-88. https://doi.org/10.3917/hume.295.0073