(2006) later found discrimination against men in programmer or computer analyst positions in the UK, while men were 5.2 percent more likely to receive a favorable response than women for engineering jobs. Zhou et al. (2013) found discrimination against men in high ranked software positions. But in Sweden, Carlsson and Rooth (2007) find no differences in the callback rates for women and men in male-dominated professions. They attribute Sweden’s occupational sex segregation not to discrimination in hiring, but rather to factors on the supply side of the labor market. In a later study, Carlsson (2011) found that across the entire labor market in Sweden, women were 3 percent more likely to be invited for job interviews than men, but there was no statistically significant difference in response rates between genders in male-dominated occupations. Women were 4 percent more likely to be invited for interviews in female-dominated and mixed-gender occupations (Carlsson 2011).

This study focuses on potential gender discrimination in the labor market in Uzbekistan, and in particular the capital city of Tashkent. The approach follows a similar experimental design to that used by Bertrand and Mullainathan (2004), and Booth and Leigh (2010). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to examine gender discrimination in employment in the context of Central Asia.

# II. Experimental Design and Identification Strategy

The primary data used for this study come from an audit correspondence survey conducted in Uzbekistan in 2020. The experiment relies on fictitious applications and measures callbacks and email invitations by employers to the emailed fictitious job applications. The paper uses additional data from the Listening to the Citizens of Uzbekistan study conducted by the World Bank together with the Development Strategy Center of Uzbekistan and other partners. The basic design includes four steps: resume design, firm selection, resume submission, and response recording.

We selected six of the most in-demand occupations advertised on four major job boards in Uzbekistan for the selected periods of the survey in early 2020: accountant, office administrator (secretary), IT specialist, welder, call center operator, and driver. We found these to be consistent with annual ratings for top demanded occupations in Uzbekistan conducted by local headhunting agencies and the government job portal – ishmehnat.uz. The top occupations were intentionally balanced between expected gender dominance: based on the wording of job postings and feedback from local partners, we defined accountant, secretary and call center operator as expected female-dominated professions, and IT specialist, driver, and welder as male dominated professions. Indeed, many employers in Uzbekistan routinely specify gender, age, character traits and appearance and use gender-coded language in job advertisements.

Firms posting jobs reviewed for this study covered several industries and types of ownership, but in the interest of comparability, all were selected in the capital city. As it is common that applicants from other regions of Uzbekistan face discrimination in the capital city, therefore we manipulate our submissions so that both applicants and their target companies are located only in Tashkent city to avoid geographic heterogeneity of discrimination. In April 2020, Tashkent city and region accounted for about half of all online open vacancies (14,497 out of around 30,000 vacancy announcements.) 7