Ethnic and gender discrimination in the private rental housing market in Finland: A field experiment

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0183344
• Publication Date: 2017-08-30T13:39:57Z
• Authors: Annamaria Öblom; Jan Antfolk
• Keywords: Male; Science; Q; Sexism; 05 social sciences; R; Racism; 5. Gender equality; 11. Sustainability; Ethnicity; Housing; Medicine; Humans; Female; 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences; 10. No inequality; Finland; Research Article

Ethnic and gender discrimination in a variety of markets has been documented in several populations. We conducted an online field experiment to examine ethnic and gender discrimination in the private rental housing market in Finland. We sent 1459 inquiries regarding 800 apartments. We compared responses to standardized apartment inquiries including fictive Arabic-sounding, Finnish-sounding or Swedish-sounding female or male names. We found evidence of discrimination against Arabic-sounding names and male names. Inquiries including Arabic-sounding male names had the lowest probability of receiving a response, receiving a response to about 16% of the inquiries made, while Finnish-sounding female names received a response to 42% of the inquires. We did not find any evidence of the landlord's gender being associated with the discrimination pattern. The findings suggest that both ethnic and gender discrimination occur in the private rental housing market in Finland.