Job adverts which use the words ‘ambition’ and ‘drive’ may deter women from applying.
Stereotypically masculine job descriptions can leave women feeling ‘intimidated’ and worried about facing a ‘boys’ club’, a study has found.
When researchers removed ‘masculine’ terms like entrepreneurial from an advert, they found the proportion of women applying increased by four per cent.
Men who were not alpha male types were also more likely to go for the job.
Dr Joyce He, who led the study from the University of California, Los Angeles, said: ‘Changing the language of a job advert, which is such a small and cost-effective thing to do, could encourage women to apply and be more inclusive for everybody.
‘Words like competitive may suggest to women that their colleagues will be stereotypically masculine and so they won’t fit in.
‘And it’s very interesting that some men may feel the same, with these words making them worry they have to appear “masculine” at work, behaving in a more dominant and competitive, even aggressive, way.’
Researchers looked at responses to job ads among 37,920 people.
Job adverts which use the words ‘ambition’ and ‘drive’ may deter women from applying (stock image)
First, they identified stereotypically masculine words required of candidates within job adverts, including ambitious, adventurous, assertive, outspoken and self-reliant.
The words commit, connect, cooperative, loyal and considerate were more feminine words listed by the study team, based on previous analysis by experts.
Then the researchers asked 793 people how they would feel about applying for a job with masculine language, using example words like aggressive, dominant and competitive.
One woman said: ‘Since it’s obvious that these jobs are trying to find male applicants (without actually saying it) based on the descriptions, I am not very likely to apply.’
Many women said they felt ‘intimidated’, with another female writing in the questionnaire: ‘I sometimes think those keywords are used to try and scare off women from applying’.
When asked about going for a stereotypically male job, another woman said she would feel insecure, but less because of her capabilities than because of a ‘boys’ club’ environment.
Asked the same questions, men described concerns about stereotypically masculine jobs putting them at a disadvantage if they did not have ‘male’ qualities such as ‘liking sports’ and worries they might not seem ‘strong or aggressive enough’.
The study went on to test how a real-life job advert, for an entry-level role within an investment firm, was received by potential applicants.
The original job was advertised as requiring an entrepreneurial spirit’, ‘the ambition to drive results’ and ‘a passion for capital markets’.
These terms were classed as stereotypically masculine by researchers, who changed them to ‘a willingness to pursue new and creative ideas’, the ‘motivation to achieve results’ and ‘an interest and curiosity’ in capital markets.
This ‘gender-neutral’ wording saw an immediate four per cent rise in the proportion of women applying.
The job advert was posted by the company approximately every month, and a rise in the proportion of female applicants was seen for 10 months after its wording was changed.
Men who felt less masculine were also more likely to apply, the study results suggest.
However the masculinity of the applicants was estimated based on their name, based partially on the theory that men whose parents chose masculine names for them probably brought them up with more typically male toys and activities, influencing how masculine they might feel as adults.
The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, did also directly judge men’s stereotypical masculinity by asking a separate group of men how much they agreed with statements such as ‘being a man is central to who I am’.
Men who identified less with being male, shown the gender-neutral version of the investment firm job ad, found it marginally more appealing than the original version.
But this part of the study, looking at 790 people in total, found the language of a job advert significantly affected the appeal of the job only for a subset of people who already worked in male-dominated industries.
These people, in particular women, may be more alert to roles where females do not ‘belong’.
The effect of language in job adverts on people’s behavior, as found by the study, was relatively small, but one woman told researchers the stereotypically male description made her feel she would have to work ‘twice as hard as men’.
