The main subject of this master’s thesis is to figure out if handicapped people are subject to discrimination when employers choose whom to invite for an interview in the province of Quebec. For this purpose, I did an experiment by sending fake resumes to jobs posted online. Some of these resumes mention a handicap and others don’t. To evaluate the effect of a handicap, I compiled the positive and negative answers from employers to my job offers. Thereafter, I tried to determine if there is a significant difference between the answers received for people with a handicap and those without one. Then, I tried to determine how the answers differ according to the explanatory variables. Variables taken into account, amongst others, include the presence or lack of subsidies for the handicapped person, age of the candidate, his/her experience, and finally, gender. The main purpose of this research is to determine if there is discrimination. One direct application could be to determine if handicapped people must include the information about their handicap in their curriculum vitae. This master’s thesis is included in a larger study by a research team.

Study on discrimination: a field survey