Why do some job adverts put women off applying?

So I came across this. Honestly I'm not even too sure what to say....this just kinda hurts my brain....

www.bbc.com...

Words matter. And the way we use them in job adverts can dictate whether or not people bother to apply. This is a big problem if you're a business trying to recruit more women and ethnic minorities into your workforce. So can tech help remove these unconscious biases?

A job description that uses the phrase "We're looking for someone to manage a team" may seem innocuous enough.

But research, based on an analysis of hundreds of millions of job ads, has shown that the word "manage" encourages more men than women to apply for the role.

Changing the word to "develop" would make it more female-friendly, says Kieran Snyder, chief executive of Seattle-based Textio, an "augmented writing software" company

Textio uses artificial intelligence to pore over job descriptions in real time, highlighting any terms that could come across as particularly masculine or feminine. The software then suggests alternatives.

Of course the company determining this 'information' won't explain why this is the case....

"We don't explain why this or that phrase excludes women," says Ms Snyder. "We just provide the data and the company in question can come up with their own theory on why that sentence doesn't work."

"We wanted to create a work culture where diverse ideas get shared," says Aubrey Blanche, Atlassian's global head of diversity and belonging.
She says Textio taught her company to avoid terms such as "coding ninja" - a common phrase in Silicon Valley job ads.

And the word stakeholder apparently "serves as a signal to people of colour that their contributions may not be valued", adds Ms Blanche.
"We don't know why, but this is what the data shows."

The researchers also found that gender preferences can be conveyed subtly through words such as "competitive," or "leader", usually associated with male stereotypes, while words such as "support" and "interpersonal" are associated with female stereotypes.
Building on this kind of research, another recruitment tech company, TalVista, assesses job descriptions and highlights "discouraging" terms in red and "inviting" terms in green,

Textio's analysis reveals that ads with lengthy bullet points detailing the role's responsibilities will face a drop-off in women applying for the job.

I just....bah.....

I guess you better be careful listing job descriptions now in case it's somehow subtly triggering....I dunno...# it...

a reply to: dug88

wow, so the data shows this gender or racial bias, but they cant explain it?! They collected data, they say what it means, but dont know why.

This world has jumped the shark

originally posted by: BlueJacket
a reply to: dug88

wow, so the data shows this gender or racial bias, but they cant explain it?! They collected data, they say what it means, but dont know why. This world has jumped the shark

Exactly. They can find a correlation, but they can't explain why. The cumulated data shows the correlation. They have the data, which consists of responses to given ads. They know that advertisement "A" attracted a given number of responses and advertisement "B" attracted a different set of responses from a different group of people, with the only differences being the phrases used in the ads themselves. So if ad "A" attracts a 70% male response and a 30% female response and advertisement "B" attracts a 50/50 response, they know that the phrases in the ads (if they controlled everything correctly) were responsible. But they don't know why a given phrase attracts one response instead of another. They just know it does. I'm willing to bet they could do the same thing with typefaces themselves, i.e.: I conjecture that using Times Roman will attract a different set of responses than Helvetica. It's a pretty easy concept, really. It's not rocket science.

Female here. I wouldn't apply for that job either. I'm very much not management material and I prefer to follow the lead of others that are more experienced and such. Nothing about the ad itself screams "men only apply" to me, but my hesitation to take a leadership role definitely does tell me not to bother.

Maybe it's simply that fewer women feel like they're able to lead a team? Especially if it's a new field of employment for you or you've been out of the job market for a while.

I don't care if the team leader is male or female, just that they're easy to work for/with and not a wholly unlikeable individual.

well they need to say things like that and offer opinion because they need to stay in business you know

next thing they will suggest mentioning the words "no matter whats between your legs"

a reply to: dug88

What if we used the word 'femanage?'

Is that ok?

originally posted by: Dr UAE
well they need to say things like that and offer opinion because they need to stay in business you know

That is exactly what they are NOT doing. They are saying, "This is what the data shows. Deal with it." That's not "offering an opinion," it is presenting the raw data for the business to consider. Their strength, and the reason they are staying in business, is their ability to present the evidence in a non-judgmental manner.

a reply to: dug88

Talk about nit-picky, what a bunch of wannabe HR morons. From the sounds of the title I thought there was a part that said,

"female applicants should have a height to weight ratio of approx 1':20lbs, dress appropriately for a strip club and bring their own pole"

J/k

Cheers - Dave

originally posted by: bobs_uruncle
a reply to: dug88

Talk about nit-picky, what a bunch of wannabe HR morons. From the sounds of the title I thought there was a part that said,

"female applicants should have a height to weight ratio of approx 1':20lbs, dress appropriately for a strip club and bring their own pole"

J/k

Cheers - Dave

Funny,
Those are the exact requirements for joining my cult.

originally posted by: Subrosabelow
Female here. I wouldn't apply for that job either. I'm very much not management material and I prefer to follow the lead of others that are more experienced and such. Nothing about the ad itself screams "men only apply" to me, but my hesitation to take a leadership role definitely does tell me not to bother.

Maybe it's simply that fewer women feel like they're able to lead a team? Especially if it's a new field of employment for you or you've been out of the job market for a while.

I don't care if the team leader is male or female, just that they're easy to work for/with and not a wholly unlikeable individual.

The thing is...I probably wouldn't apply for a job that said manager in something I didn't feel qualified to be the manager or team leader for either. What does that have to do with being a man or a woman? This doesn't make sense to me...I don't look at the wording for jobs that seem more feminine and think I shouldn't apply. I just read what the job entails and compare whether I have the skills to do the job or not and think about whether it's something I would like doing...the words the ad chooses to use means nothing to me. Honestly, for most job ads i'm applying to I usually just skip to the qualifications and duties anyway. I don't usually pay much attention to job titles. They're usually meaningless anyway.

they analyzed data and showed what the data said.

if you don't like the implications of it... don't get triggered?

a reply to: fiverx313

Isn't there are song....

"Feewings, nothing Moe than feewings, trying to forget my, feewings of duhhhh."

Just funnin with ya. A biased study, uses biased people to look at a biased subject, but produces an objective and repeatable biased report. Okey donkey, yeah, that's scientific lol.

Cheers - Dave

a reply to: bobs_uruncle

if you don't appreciate the study of semantics, that's fine. no need to be rude.

It's (apparently) an advertisement for a "job". It spells/spelled out what they're looking and not looking for.
, in a new hire. If the English language bothers you. I'd stop reading English "help wanted" "adverts". Or better yet? Build your self-esteem and education. Doesn't sound at all, like they're trying to "put women off". It sounds like a reading, comprehension and emotion problem to me.

originally posted by: dug88

The thing is...I probably wouldn't apply for a job that said manager in something I didn't feel qualified to be the manager or team leader for either. What does that have to do with being a man or a woman? This doesn't make sense to me...I don't look at the wording for jobs that seem more feminine and think I shouldn't apply.

You might not. And you may think that you are immune from being influenced by such things, but the data show otherwise. It doesn't matter what you think you do. The fact is (and this is the whole point) certain words and phrases tend to elicit responses from certain kinds of people. That is statistically supported by the data. They are not looking for an individual response here. They are looking at the aggregate of the data where your response is a mere single data point among many that, when all totaled up, shows a trend. Your individual response could be an outlier, or it could be right smack dab in the middle, but if the trend holds, it is valid. Once this becomes well known, it would behoove any organization to pay attention to it. If your organization habitually uses phrases in recruitment that are known and proven to attract only white males (as an example) you are dead meat if you ignore it.

Some of this is more subtle than you might like, but it is very powerful. I'll give you another example. In the promotion of professors in academia, we all know that "publish or perish" is an issue. If you do not publish, or if you publish poorly, you are unlikely to get tenure. There are lots of problems with this that are immaterial to the following issue. If women are not promoted at the same rate as males to get tenure, how do you judge this? "Publish or perish" is cited as a valid reason that has nothing to do with gender, right? One way you can judge publications is the number of times a given author has been cited by another author. (This is just an example, now.) That's a measurement of if not quality, then surely reputation in the field. So if it can be shown that a given female professor is cited twice as many times as a given male professor (all things being equal) and the male professor is promoted and the female professor is not, then you just bought yourself a lawsuit. That's the kind of data that can get you into trouble. And that's the kind of data that we are talking about here.

If "Words matter" then we need to be intellectual honest enough to accept that:

"We're looking for someone to manage a team"

And

"We're looking for someone to develop a team"

Are not at all the same thing. The first denotes that the team already exists and the hired manager is going to have to be able to assert themselves into a preexisting culture and work flow. The second denotes that the team does not yet exist in part or in whole and that the hired manager will have to pick the team and create the culture and work flow.

Maybe the second job is more appealing to women and the first job is more appealing to men for some reason; I can speculate why that might be, but that's besides the point. If I'm hiring for a job im going to be as accurate as I can in the description so that I get qualified and willing applicants. I'm not going to obscure what the job entails just to make a quota of job applicants. That would be a disservice to not only tonmy company but the job applicant as well. How disappointed would someone who expects to "develop" a team be when they find out that I only want them to "manage" a team I have already developed?

Are the same men applying to both differently worded job descriptions, or are feminized men applying to the liberalized versions? On the flip side, who are the women applying to the managerial jobs? Are they the same women applying for the interpersonal jobs?
Is it possible that none from group “a” are related to group “b”? Man or woman-

This is insane.
What other words that inherently have no gender bias will also become biased?

This has gone way too far to even be credible.

The next thing you know, you won't be able to call a happy, go lucky fellow, gay anymore.

originally posted by: DanDanDat
How disappointed would someone who expects to "develop" a team be when they find out that I only want them to "manage" a team I have already developed?

Then that should come out in the interview process. You are picking on a speculative example rather than the data itself, which we actually do not know from what has been presented. Another example might be an advertisement for an "experienced C++ programmer" versus "A Ninja programmer." Care to wiggle out of that one? How about "join our nurturing environment where alternative ideas are accepted" versus "join our crackerjack programming team!" It's not about your own personal idiolect and what you think words mean and how you think you are being precise. It's about the effect of your words on the applicants you draw in. You may think you are being more precise by saying you want a "manager" instead of a "developer," but if by succumbing to your own ideas of precision you attract 90% males and 10% females, you've just generated a problem for yourself. It's not about you; it's about them. If you refuse to understand this issue, your HR manager had better. They just might save your bacon.