Up to 3/4ths of the gender pay gap stems from women’s sorting into low-wage firms. Do women prefer amenities to wages, or face barriers to search? I answer this using 29 million job applications from Pakistan’s largest job search platform, firm and worker surveys, and an experiment mandating pay transparency. I document that large, high-paying firms are more likely to omit salaries in job ads, and less likely to offer flexibility – an amenity women value more. When pay is disclosed, men and women respond similarly. But when undisclosed, behaviors diverge: men search randomly, while women sort negatively on pay. To test if transparency closes these gaps, I randomize mandatory vs. optional pay disclosure in 20,088 jobs across 8,906 firms. The experiment leaves large-firm pay and amenities unchanged. Yet women’s applications to these firms increase 95%, and men’s 59%. This implies women do not prefer flexibility to pay. Rather, they turn to flexibility when they cannot access pay. Meanwhile, large firms most exposed to transparency become 30% more likely to disclose pay post-experiment.
