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.
