Barriers to Reintegration: An Audit Study of the Impact of Race and Offender Status on Employment Opportunities for Women

Abstract

Previous research has illustrated that the stigma of a criminal record can severely impede employment opportunities for exoffenders, especially African American men, however there is very little research examining how women are affected by criminal records. I expand upon prior research by testing the effects of criminal history and race on female employment prospects. I predict that as research has shown for men, race will present a significant barrier for women seeking to find employment and further predict that a criminal history will be even more stigmatizing for women than it is for men. To test these predictions I employed an audit methodology and submitted fictitious resumes to Chicago-land employers for entry-level jobs. I then compared employer callback rates to test the separate and combined effects of race and criminal history. Results indicate that a prior criminal history had little impact on employer response rates (the white female without a criminal record received responses to 19% of the jobs applied for, the white female with a criminal record 14%, the African American female without a criminal record 14%, and the African American female with a criminal record 12%). Results initially indicated that race had no significant impact on employer response rates. Due to the continuing decline of the economy over the data collection period I ran tests to compare data collected prior to the midpoint of data collection to that collected after the midpoint. The results were weak evidence for racial disparity (favoring white applicants) over the first half of the data collection period suggesting that future research should investigate whether African American women in healthier economies face greater adversity in the hiring process than their Caucasian counterparts.