Age, gender, and a double jeopardy in expatriate selection

While the demographics of workforces in industrialized economies are becoming ever more diverse, the typical profile of expatriates has not changed notably in the last decades: Expatriates are still predominately males in their 30s or 40s.One potential explanation for the lack of diversity within the expatriate population is a selection process that is influenced by selection biases. The present study examines such selection biases against older candidates, and especially a double jeopardy for older female candidates, in addition to replicating known biases against female candidates. Furthermore, the goal was to explore cultural differences in biases. In a vignette study with 212 international graduate students, we replicated a bias against female candidates, but in contrast to previous findings results revealed female participants to be more strongly biased against their own gender group. Although there were no age effects for the overall sample, results exposed different biases for different cultural groups. While participants from Protestant European countries were biased in favor of older female candidates, those from Catholic European countries were biased in favor of younger male candidates. Thus, results show that the expatriate selection process is affected by biases, and that these biases are culture-sensitive. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings and offer suggestions for future research.