UK job adverts full of gender-biased language

In this day and age, you wouldn’t expect men and women to be treated differently in the workplace, however, it has been revealed in the largest study of UK job adverts that each one seems to be full of gender-biased language. The research, carried out by Totaljobs, studied just over 76,000 adverts over a six-week period and shockingly every one looked at contained six gender-biased words. The most commonly used male-biased words included:

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

The most commonly used female-biased words included:

• Support – 85,095 mentions
• Responsible – 64,909
• Understanding – 29,638
• Dependable – 16,979
• Committed – 13,129

The highest number of female-biased words used in job descriptions came under ‘Residential worker’ and ‘Nursery nurse’ titles, while the job description that used the most male-biased words was for a ‘Senior revenue manager’. Interestingly, senior positions, such as ‘Director’ and ‘Partner’ showed a 22% slant towards using male-biased language. For example:

• Head – 1,013 jobs (50% male bias / 36% female bias)
• Director – 582 jobs (55% male bias / 32% female bias)
• Partner – 320 jobs (52% male bias / 34% female bias)
• Chief – 45 jobs (64% male bias / 36% female bias)

David Clift, HR director at Totaljobs, commented on the recent findings, “Today we release one of the most comprehensive studies of the language of recruitment ever carried out in the UK. Employers have taken great strides in driving greater opportunities for employees but these findings showcase exactly how much further we have to go to promote diversity and equal opportunity across every sector of the UK economy. He added, “It is clear that gender stereotypes in relation to certain roles are so entrenched, the market needs to take action to address this. Only by addressing the unconscious bias that still exists at the very start of a candidate search, can we move towards truly diverse workforces and make inroads in tacking major challenges like the Gender Pay Gap. We hope both recruiters embrace the new Gender Bias Decoder and take the opportunity to do the ground work to help them avoid perpetuating the issues that April’s new legislation will seek to address.”

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