Diversity


Andrew Baird Director of Consulting at Blackbridge Communications


Can the language we use in recruitment affect the gender balance of applications? A recent survey, shows Andrew Baird, Director of Consulting at Blackbridge Communications, asked the question of 1000 undergraduates – and discovered there could be more to it than we thought.


DIFFERENT WORDS FOR DIFFERENT GENDERS


Back in 1977 Barclays ran a series of


recruitment ads in magazines aimed at


teenage girls. As you can see in the image, the proposition was pretty clear: take a job behind the glass and a dashing


husband might not be far away.


Before we rush to be critical of Barclays, it’s


worth remembering that they were following the dominant social mores of the day. But there’s more to this ad than just a shocking reminder of sexist times past.


In the four short paragraphs of body copy, the word help or helping is used four times. Coincidence? Well, no. In fact, the tactic of appealing to women by using words suggesting help or support isn’t unique to this advert, and has been the subject of a fair amount of academic research over the years.


14 TheStudentEmployer ise.org.uk


Inequality sustained One such paper, from 2013, is Evidence That Gendered Wording in Job Advertisements Exists and Sustains Gender Inequality, by Danielle Gaucher, Justin Friesen and Aaron C. Kay.


The paper reports on a number of research findings, not least that


historically masculine industries


generate recruitment ads that are heavy with masculine words or phrases – resulting in fewer women applying. Conscious or not, it’s a practice that helps sustain gender imbalances in those industries.


But there’s a positive flipside. Maybe if you actively discourage masculine language in recruitment – and encourage feminine language – you might increase your percentage of female applicants.


Agency vs Communality


But first things first. What are these gendered words?


The website gender-decoder.katmatfield. com has collated masculine words from a variety of studies. These words include active, adventurous, ambitious, analytical, assertive, athletic and autonomous. (Yes, they’re just the As.)


The web site Hire More Women in Tech has a good example of how gendered words can have a big impact when used together. ‘We are a dominant engineering firm that boasts many leading clients’ should appeal to males, whilst ‘We are a community of engineers who have effective relationships with many satisfied clients’ should resonate with females.


It’s an interesting theory which we decided to test in the real world.


Fictional recruiter We devised a fictional employer, Rowan Tree Hotels, which was allegedly recruiting for an early talent training scheme. (We chose hospitality because the industry’s relatively gender-neutral, employing males and females in almost equal measure.)


We wrote two ads to recruit early talent into the scheme. The job role and


The unifying theme is that masculine words suggest agency: words that suggest making choices, leading or influencing.


The big idea with feminine words is that they’re generally about communality, or working together. Such words include agree, affectionate, cheer, collaborative and commit.


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