When it comes to STEM professions, it is clear that in Australia, women are largely underrepresented. According to a study by Australia’s Chief Scientist released in 2016, only 14% of Australian engineers are women and only 16% of Australia’s STEM qualified people are female. So, when there’s a national shortage of women in STEM, how can you attract more females to your workforce?

While there are lots of possible answers to this, one of the solutions is to use gender-neutral language. This seems straightforward but can come with numerous, confronting issues to tackle; including battling with our unconscious bias. Using gender-neutral language in your job advert can help you attract more women to your STEM vacancy without deterring the men who would also be equally as qualified for the role.

What is gender-neutral language?

Gender-neutral language (also referred to as gender-inclusive language), is dialect that avoids bias towards a particular social gender. A basic example of this is the move from using the term ‘two-man job’ which immediately infers a male bias, to the term ‘two-person job’ which does not associate a specific gender.

While the example above uses an obviously gendered term, this article will mainly refer to words and phrases that are gender-coded.

What is gender-coded language?

Gender-coded language is when a word has undertones that are biased towards a specific gender. You could be unconsciously using these terms within your job advert, as they are not overtly obvious in their gender association.

A research paper, Evidence That Gendered Wording in Job Advertisements Exists and Sustains Gender Inequality (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, July 2011, Vol 101(1), p109-28), written by Danielle Gaucher, Justin Friesen, and Aaron C. Kay; discussed how using gender-biased language (whether unconsciously or not) can consequently affect who will apply to your job vacancy. Their paper identified the words used and how they could attract or detract candidates.

Identifying words that are gender-coded can be difficult; especially since the most natural or appropriate word choices may be coded, such as; lead, connect, independent and cooperative.

Totaljobs, the UK’s largest hiring platform, did some research into the most commonly used gender-coded words in UK job descriptions and here’s what they found;

Most commonly used male-gendered words in job descriptions:

• Lead (70,539 mentions)
• Analyse (35,339)
• Competitive (23,079)
• Active (20,041)
• Confident (13,841)

Most commonly used female-gendered words in job descriptions:

• Support (83,095)
• Responsible (64,909)
• Understanding (29,638)
• Dependable (16,979)
• Committed (13,129)

Through a total of 77,000 job ads, there averaged a gender-bias of 6 words per ad.

Source: https://blog.totaljobs.com/gender-bias

Does this mean to say women are not leaders or analytical (etc)?

It categorically does not!! Women can absolutely be leaders, analytical, confident (etc); this research indicates that women are more hesitant when applying for roles that include these words in the description. When a job ad has a bias towards masculine coded language, women may feel (even on an unconscious level) that they are not eligible for the role and so do not apply.

Why is it imperative that this changes?

Totaljob’s research indicates ‘a distinct male-bias in adverts for senior positions, while supporting roles were worded with feminine coded words.’ By becoming more aware of this unconscious biased, we can encourage more women to apply for these more senior roles and encourage more women into male-dominated careers (without deterring the men who are also capable and qualified); moving towards a better gender balance and equality in the work place as a whole.

Not only this, but research on issue this in the USA indicates that the job ads that were gender neutral received 42% more responses than those that were biased. Wouldn’t it be amazing, if nearly double the talent were applying to every job ad you posted?

How do you tackle unconscious gender-bias in job ads?

The way we solve this as HR professionals is by ensuring we use gender-neutral terms as much as possible; where not possible, we ensure there is an equal balance of these words to avoid our ad being heavily directed towards one gender.

As Gaucher, Friesen and Kay state ‘The results were clear: Women were more interested in male-dominated careers when the advertisements were unbiased, making reference to both men and women as candidates, than when the advertisements made reference only to men’; so, to attract more women to the male-dominated STEM roles, we must ensure our ads are as unbiased as possible. It’s as simple as that.

Need some further help and clarification?

Our recruitment advertising team are experts in candidate attraction and copywriting job advertisements. Discuss your recruitment advertising needs today by calling us on 1300 366 573 or email us at info@employmentoffice.com.au.

If you’ve already written your job advert and you aren’t sure whether you have unconsciously used gender-coded terms, Totaljobs have a Gender Bias Decoder, where you can paste your copy and identify the gendered words you may have missed.

We also have a small cheat sheet below to help you find a more appropriate word or phrase.