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Deterring Female Candidates: The Impact of Masculine Language in Job Ads

August 20th, 2021

New research reveals that job advertisements featuring ‘masculine’ language dissuade women from applying for those positions, as fewer than half of women choose to submit applications to vacancies utilizing male-coded language.

The study, which involved an analysis of over 7,500 job adverts, employed a gender score calculator to assess the language used in each advertisement, identifying feminine-coded terms (such as together, collaborate, responsibility, and share) and masculine words (including individual, challenging, and driven). The report discovered that job ads containing strongly masculine language witnessed a reduction of up to 10% in the number of female applicants, with just 44% of women applying for such roles.

Read the full article here.

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