We investigate how candidates' willingness to apply responds to (potential) discrimination and rejection using a simulated labor market. Participants in our large online experiment are assigned to the role of either a recruiter or a candidate for a technical coding task. Candidates provide their willingness to apply for the opportunity with a non-blind resume that provides a coarse signal of their skills alongside gender and age, or a blind resume that hides the demographic information. We find that blinding applications increases the rate at which counter-stereotypical candidates apply, revealing an important channel through which blinding interventions can broaden and diversify the pool of talent. Our study goes beyond initial applications to explore the downstream effects of blinding in markets where candidates receive feedback. We ask whether rejections resulting from a blind process have a different impact than non-blind rejections. The effect could go either way: potential discrimination having a particularly discouraging effect on future application behavior, or a blind rejection instead being a stronger signal of quality and therefore inducing greater deterrence. We find support for the latter channel. Blind rejections have a larger impact on future applications than non-blind rejections, particularly for women. As a result, while blinding initially reduces age and gender gaps in willingness to apply, the supply-side benefits of blinding are more muted after a rejection. This causal evidence on the net effects of blinding advances our understanding of the interconnected nature of recruiter and candidate decision-making.

How do political parties react to gender electoral policies in Brazil? Using data from seven municipal elections, we show that Brazilian political parties react to gender quotas and funding requirements by strategically placing female candidates for municipal councillors in races where they expect weak performance while reserving "sure" races for men. Despite national-level compliance requirements, weak enforcement at the municipal level enables this strategic distribution across localities based on electoral competitiveness. In municipalities that are historically electoral strongholds, the share of female candidates increased more after quota implementation than in competitive municipalities, driven by a larger increase among non-dominant parties. Conversely, dominant parties reduced all-male candidate lists 23.5% less than those running in competitive races. We document a sharp increase in token female candidacies after the adoption of gender quotas, reduced by the introduction of campaign funding requirements. Our results point to the importance of factoring electoral competition and party responses when designing gender equality policies.

8th Economics and Politics Workshop, CERGIC Internal Seminar, Gender Gaps Conference 2024, PSE-GPET Internal Seminar.