Gender/Nationality Discrimination and Flexibility Stigma in Promotion Evaluations at Japanese Companies: Focusing on Statistical Discrimination

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that statistical discrimination against women, immigrants, and individuals who have previously used flexibility policies occurs in promotion evaluations for managerial positions within Japanese companies. Using the causal mediation experiment framework from Acharya et al. (2018), we test whether presenting additional information—such as job performance and promotion motivation—reduces the penalty on promotion evaluations experienced by women and those who used flexibility policies. We expect these additional factors to mitigate the penalty, thereby demonstrating statistical discrimination.