This article presents the findings of a field experiment carried out in Madrid which aims to analyse gender and age discrimination in hiring in the labour market of Madrid. A set of five pairs of fictitious man–woman curricula was sent in response to 1062 job offers in six occupations which were advertised on Internet over an eight-month period. It was quantified subsequently the extent to which the different firms contacted more or less the candidates of different sex, age and marital status. No discrimination is detected against women in terms of access to job interviews; however, discriminatory conduct is seen regarding the phenomenon of occupational gender segregation, in the sense that there is a continuance among employers of stereotyped views on the greater suitability of women for certain tasks. No evidence is found to indicate firms showing relative discrimination against married women with children in the first phase of hiring process. And a clear evidence of discrimination is obtained on the basis of age: firms show a substantial fall in interest over interviewing 38-year-old candidates (compared to those aged 24 or 28). This would imply that the tendency to discriminate against older workers may be high, and, what is more, it may start at a surprisingly young age.

This article is based on a survey that we conducted among 1,130 couples with children 3-8 years old, in Madrid and its metropolitan area. This allowed us, in the first place to obtain an estimation of the take-up rate and duration of the different kinds of childbirth leaves that Spanish workers use when they have or adopt a child. In the second place, the participation of the father has been analyzed in comparison to the mother’s in 18 specific childcare activities. A measure for father involvement in childcare (relative to the mother) that included 14 non-playful activities of childcare was built from there. Then, from a quantitative analysis with path analysis modelling with Amos program, we have obtained evidence that fathers who took more time off later tended to be more involved in the most routine childcare activities. Moreover, when considering other determinants of father’s involvement in childcare, we can highlight the importance of having egalitarian gender attitudes, working in a family-friendly company, the net earnings, and the mother’s working week. Most of these variables affect father’s involvement in childcare directly and indirectly, through their effects on the duration of childbirth leave (which serves as a mediating variable). Finally, a specific determinant of the duration of childcare leave was the introduction of a 13-day paternity leave in Spain, in March 2007.