ACSA

iInnovDEASative and Dynamic Educational Activities for Schools CURRICULUM CONTEXT Level: Middle / upper secondary Curriculum areas: Commerce / Business studies, Values education

It’s all in a name!

In this resource students explore Australian research revealing that Australian employers are influenced by the name of an applicant, as revealed in a job application, when selecting who to interview during a recruitment process. Students are challenged to think about why this exists, and to explore the development of stereotypes based on ethnicity and .

This resource is adapted from a learning activity in Learning from One Another: Bringing Muslim perspectives into Australian schools, written by Eeqbal Hassim and Jennet Cole-Adams and published by the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies, University of , 2010.

Background Two recent studies conducted by economists at the Australian National University (ANU) showed that job applicants found it easier to get an interview for jobs as waiters, data entry operators, customer service operators and sales staff if they if they had an Anglo-Saxon name, and if they were female. The studies, completed in 2009 and 2010, involved sending more than 4000 fictional CVs in response to job advertisements in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. The job applications contained CVs that were controlled for factors such as training, experience and Australian schooling. However names were randomly assigned to applications. (Although Chinese names were used in the study on racial and ethnic discrimination, they were omitted from the gender analysis because of concern that Australian employers might be unable to distinguish male and female Chinese names.)

The full reports of the studies can be found online: Does Racial and Ethnic Discrimination Vary Across Minority Groups? Evidence From Three Experiments at http://ftp.iza.org/dp4947.pdf and also Do Employers Discriminate by Gender? A Field Experiment in Female-Dominated Occupations at http://people.anu.edu.au/andrew.leigh/pdf/AuditGender.pdf

ACSA IDEAS IT’S ALL IN A NAME! Learning outcomes Students will: • appreciate the assumptions that people could make based on a person’s name • explore the findings of research recently undertaken at the Australian National University about racial and ethnic discrimination in the workforce • reflect on the reasons for the development of stereotypes, and the implications of these stereotypes for members of the community.

References Alison Booth, Andrew Leigh and Elena Varganova, 2009, Does Racial and Ethnic Discrimination Vary Across Minority Groups? Evidence From Three Experiments, http://ftp.iza.org/dp4947.pdf Alison Booth and Andrew Leigh, 2010, Do Employers Discriminate by Gender? A Field Experiment in Female- Dominated Occupations, http://people.anu.edu.au/andrew.leigh/pdf/AuditGender.pdf Eeqbal Hassim and Jennet Cole-Adams, 2010, Learning From One Another: Bringing Muslim perspectives into Australian schools, National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies, University of Melbourne.

ACSA IDEAS IT’S ALL IN A NAME! iACSA DEAS LEARNING SEQUENCE Activity one: My name Ask your students to focus on their own names by working with a partner to answer the following questions • Is there a story behind why you were given your name? • Do you like your name? Why or why not? • What do you think people who do not know you might assume about you based only on your name? (Students may need to be prompted to think about gender and ethnicity.)

Activity two: A study in discrimination Begin this activity by writing the following names on the board. They are actually examples of ethnically distinctive names, used in the ANU study about discrimination in the workplace: Jennifer Robinson, Ahmed Kassir, Winnie Tjungarrayi, Peng Lin and Maria Ferrari

Ask your students what ethnic backgrounds they think these people may have. (The names are Anglo, Middle Eastern, Aboriginal, Chinese, and Italian.)

Now distribute or display the What’s in a name? worksheet (which describes the ANU study) to your students.

When students have read the worksheet, discuss the following questions as a class: • What are the stereotypes that the employers may have associated with each of the ethnically distinctive names? • Where do these stereotypes come from? • Do you think the employers made conscious or subconscious decisions to favour applicants with certain names? Why? • Why do you think the results varied between different ethnic groups? • Can this discrimination be overcome? If you believe that it can be, what needs to happen for this change to occur?

The ANU researchers who completed the study on racial and ethnic discrimination followed up by analysing the responses to the job applications according to the gender of the ‘applicant’. Invite your students to speculate as to whether males or females were more likely to be selected for an interview for the four different job types described on the What’s in a name? worksheet. Why do they anticipate these results? Do they think that the results would have been different 10 years ago? Fifty years ago?

An analysis of the responses in the ANU study found that: Averaging across all jobs, we observe substantial discrimination against male candidates. The typical female applicant received a callback 32 per cent of the time, while the typical male candidate received a callback 25 per cent of the time. Consequently, an average male candidate would have had to submit 28 per cent more applications in order to receive the same number of callbacks. (Booth & Leigh, 2010, pp. 4–5)

ACSA IDEAS IT’S ALL IN A NAME! Activity three: Gabriella’s story Distribute the worksheet titled Gabriella’s story to your students. Ask them to complete the worksheet with written responses.

Activity four: Class debate Conclude this activity with a class debate: ‘Discrimination is a feature of any multicultural society’.

ACSA IDEAS IT’S ALL IN A NAME! ACSA

iI DEASi dD iEd i lA i ii f Sh l WORKSHEET 1 What’s in a name? A recent study by researchers from the Australian National University found that job applicants find it easier to get an interview if they have an Anglo-Saxon name.

The study, completed in June 2009, involved sending over 4000 fake CVs in response to job advertisements in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. Several types of CV were created and different names were substituted into the CVs. The advertised positions were in hospitality, data entry, customer service and sales.

‘By varying the names on the CVs, we were able to estimate precisely the extent of hiring discrimination’ explained one of the researchers, Professor Alison Booth. ‘Because all other characteristics are held constant, we can be sure that we are really measuring discrimination.’

The study used a selection of ethnically distinctive names reflecting Anglo-Saxon, Middle Eastern, Indigenous, Chinese and Italian ethnicity. Names such as Adam Mitchell, Lala Hariri, Ronnie Japanangka, Ping Chang and Giuseppe Romano were included in the study.

The findings indicated that to get the same number of interviews as an applicant with an Anglo-Saxon name, an applicant: • with Chinese name must submit 68 per cent more applications • with a Middle Eastern name must submit 64 per cent more applications • with an Indigenous name must submit 35 per cent more applicants • with an Italian name must submit 12 per cent more applications.

The fake CVs made it clear that the applicants had completed high school in so it is unlikely that employers thought the applicants did not speak English.

One interesting statistic to emerge from the study was that in Melbourne, Italian-named applicants were not disadvantaged. In fact, in Melbourne, Italian-named applicants could submit 7 per cent fewer applications than Anglo-named applicants to get an interview.

The full report of the study can be found on the Australian National University website at http://ftp.iza.org/dp4947.pdf

ACSA IDEAS IT’S ALL IN A NAME! ACSA

iI DEASi dD iEd i lA i ii f Sh l WORKSHEET 2 Gabriella’s story “After completing TAFE in 2005 I applied for many junior positions where no experience in sales was needed — even though I had worked for two years as a junior sales clerk. I didn’t receive any calls so I decided to legally change my name to Gabriella Hannah. I applied for the same jobs and got a call 30 minutes later.” Gabriella Hannah, formerly Ragda Ali, Sydney

How do you think that Gabriella might have felt about changing her name? What emotions might she have experienced?

What other options do you think that that Gabriella could have taken to increase her chances of securing a job?

How would you feel about changing your own name? What would be the advantages and/or disadvantages?

What suggestions could you put to the government that may reduce discrimination in Australian workplaces?

ACSA IDEAS IT’S ALL IN A NAME!