Study shows women job hunters prefer gender-inclusive job titles

By Stephen Beech via SWNS

Women are more likely to apply for jobs with "gender-sensitive" titles, suggests a new study.

Researchers found that job titles with gender-neutral and feminine grammatical forms attracted more ad views by women.

The German study suggests that the use of gender-sensitive language in the title of job advertisements may influence the level of interest shown by female potential applicants.

German is one of several languages in which every noun is grammatically masculine, feminine, or neutral. For instance, “teacher” is grammatically masculine, “sun” is feminine, and “boat” is neutral.

Because the German word for “teacher” is grammatically masculine, someone referring to a teacher of no specified gender will still use the masculine form.

But in recent years concerns have grown that the so-called "generic masculine" form could create a problematic male bias.

Subsequently, a range of alternative forms have arisen to refer to a mixed-gender group or an entity of no specific gender.

Professor Dominik Hetjens, of Technische Universität Dresden, and Dr. Stefan Hartmann, of Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, analyzed data on 256,934 German-language employment listings posted on an online job platform from 2020 to 2022.

Their findings, published in the journal PLOS One, showed that, overall, job titles that used gender-sensitive language had a "consistently higher" proportion of female users who clicked to view the entire job ad than job titles using the generic masculine.

The trend was even more pronounced for alternative forms that make the feminine form explicit by including the feminine suffix “-in” than for other alternatives, such as the addition of the gender-neutral “-kraft.”

Hetjens says the results held true even for ads in the female-dominated nursing profession.

He said: "These findings suggest that gender-sensitive language in job advertisements may influence the behavior of potential applicants."

The researchers pointed out that the underlying explanation for their results is likely complex and multifaceted, and more research is needed to clarify any relationship between gender-sensitive language and job applicant interest.

Hetjens added: “We found that the use of gender-sensitive language in job titles correlates with a higher proportion of female user interaction.

"However, follow-up studies are needed to understand the causes of this correlation.”