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 Study: Gay Men Face More Discrimination Than
Lesbians In Workplace
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
Posted: October 24, 2007 - 3:00 pm ET
(Durham, New Hampshire) Gay men working in
management and traditional blue-collar, male-dominated jobs make less than
straight men because they are discriminated against by their employers,
according to new research released Wednesday by the University of New Hampshire
Whittemore School of Business and Economics.
Lesbians, however, do not experience similar
discrimination in the labor market, according to Bruce Elmslie, professor of
economics, and his co-author Edinaldo Tebaldi, former assistant professor of
economics at UNH now at Bryant University.
Their research appears in the Journal of Labor
Research in the article “Sexual Orientation and Labor Market
Discrimination.”
According to the authors, gay men who live
together earn 23 percent less than married men, and 9 percent less than
unmarried heterosexual men who live with a woman.
Discrimination is most pronounced in management
and blue-collar, male-dominated occupations such as building and grounds
cleaning and maintenance; construction and extraction; and production.
The authors also found that lesbians are not
discriminated against when compared with heterosexual women.
They conclude that while negative attitudes
toward lesbians could affect them, lesbians may benefit from the perception that
they are more career-focused and less likely to leave the labor market to raise
children than heterosexual women.
According to their study, 18.1 percent of
lesbians have children, compared with 49.4 percent of straight women.
“Employers could reasonably infer that a
lesbian applicant or current employee will have a stronger attachment to the
labor force than will a heterosexual woman,” the authors said.
The authors note that previous studies of
attitudes of heterosexual men toward gay men and lesbians shows that the bias
against gay men is much stronger. Other studies show that gay men are more
likely to be the victim of violence because of their sexual identity than
lesbians.
The authors cite a number of possible factors as
to why gay men experience labor discrimination and lower wages in certain
industries. There is strong evidence indicating discrimination is tied to
employer and employee bias.
“Employers may disapprove of gay lifestyles and
act on this bias in making hiring decisions,” the authors said. Employers also
may discriminate against gay men in response to the desires of the majority of
employees. If employers consider mixing heterosexual and homosexual employees
distracting and detrimental to productivity, the authors said the employers may
consider it profitable to discriminate.
Gay men also may experience labor market
discrimination because customers may not want to interact with them, thus
influencing hiring practices. “If customers prefer to interact with
heterosexual employees, the owner will act on the customer’s taste for
discrimination,” the authors said.
Finally, discrimination may occur as a result of
anti-gay attitudes associated with AIDS and misunderstanding as to how HIV is
transmitted. Previous research shows that people with HIV/AIDS have higher rates
of absenteeism from work. The authors theorize that biased employers may be
reluctant to hire gay men because they are concerned about a loss of
productivity if a worker becomes infected with HIV/AIDS.
“If employers perceive one group to be
generally less productive or more costly than other groups, individual members
of the negatively perceived group will receive lower wage offers regardless of
their true characteristics,” the authors said.
In this study, employee/employer bias was the
most prevalent and overwhelming indication of discrimination against gay men. If
the discrimination was consumer-based, the discrimination would be more evident
in the services industry where there is direct interaction between employees and
customers. If the discrimination was tied to AIDS/HIV status, the distribution
of discrimination would be more uniform across industries.
The authors analyzed labor and wage information
from more than 91,000 heterosexual and homosexual couples collected by the U.S.
Census March 2004 Current Population Survey.
©365Gay.com 2007
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