disapproval. Interestingly, the disapproval for married women’s work was higher than the levels recorded in response to a similar question in the American General Social Survey nearly 45 years ago. Using content analysis of stereotyping in job advertisements in India for instance, Anand (2013) finds widespread use of gender specific terms for jobs such as that of a receptionist, a telecaller, data entry operator and a teacher. Terms range from the benign ‘Receptionist only – Female’ to comments regarding age and physical attributes: ‘beautiful and broad minded (F) office assistant and personal secretary’, ‘up to 25’ and so on. Conversely, sales and field jobs are earmarked as a ‘boys-only’ section, with keywords like ‘field boys’ and ‘sales boys’. Khandelwal (2002) similarly finds that male managers are stereotyped into working in production and sales whereas women work in ‘soft fields’ like Human Resources and Public Relations.

In a more recent analysis of 800,000 job recruitment advertisements sourced from an online job portal in India, Chowdhury et al (2018) find that it is common to mention the preferred gender in job advertisements. Further, these advertisements tend to favor men over women. Although advertisements for professional occupations exhibit less explicit gender bias, they too are not completely gender neutral. In all professional jobs, those advertisements that target men specify/offer a higher salary.

Gender stereotyping and pervasive bias in attitudes during recruitment is something of a self-fulfilling prophesy. Once women view the labor market as being discriminatory, or ‘feel’ that they would not be selected for a job, they may abandon the search. Discriminatory or non-transparent hiring practices send misleading signals to women about the kind of jobs they are suitable for, in turn dampening their aspirations. Women construct their identities through the lens of these gender stereotypes and willingly accept their disadvantaged place in the workforce (Ridgeway, 1997). In a review undertaken for the World Bank to unpack gender constraints and opportunities in India’s Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) sector, the International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW) finds that vendors who deal with self-employment ventures prefer to interact with men. Women on their part are aware of such biases and themselves hesitate to engage in market spaces traditionally associated with men (ICRW 2014). With few opportunities to gain successful entry into well-paying jobs or gain skills for upward mobility, women end up internalizing stereotypes about themselves, leading to a ‘discouraged worker effect’ (Das 2006).

# **4. Data and methods**

This paper seeks to answer the question – what is the role of firm characteristics and attitudes of hiring managers in gender outcomes in hiring? It uses data from a unique survey of firms in three cities of MP – Bhopal, Indore and Gwalior. The survey contains questions on the characteristics of firms, gender and skill profiles of workers and attitudes of hiring managers (who are often the owners) about female employees and what they expect of them.

**Sample selection:** The sample of enterprises was selected from a manual listing of all enterprises registered with the Directorate of Industries (DIC) in the three cities. Since the data set was large enough, only enterprises registered in the five years prior to the survey i.e. between 2010 and 2015 – were considered. Separate lists were created for

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