Organizations face public pressure to increase attraction to women in male-dominated occupations (e.g., STEM fields) since they continue to be underrepresented. Although existing literature has explained that the pay information disclosure could contribute to diminishing gender pay inequity for current employees, we know little about how it influences the attractiveness of female job applicants in STEM fields during the hiring process. Drawing on fairness heuristic theory, we argue that in the STEM hiring context, the size of the pay range positively relates to female applicants’ anticipated gender pay inequity, such that advertising a wide pay range in job postings causes higher gender pay inequity than advertising a narrow pay range. Moreover, female applicants’ personal gender discrimination strengthens the adverse effect. We find support for these predictions in a preregistered experiment by recruiting real job applicants in STEM fields to improve both internal and external validity.
