I Fit Here! Social Responsibility Type and Wordings in Recruitment Affect Women’s Pursuit Intentions

Abstract

While varied efforts at workplaces have helped improve gender equality in recent years, most occupations still suffer from a stark underrepresentation of women in the workforce. In this research, we consider the possibility of the impact of women’s self-stereotyping processes on their own job search, pursuit efforts, and application intentions during the recruitment process. We explore how different kinds of social responsibility activities of an employer can impact women's job pursuit intentions with the employer where self-stereotyping processes can kick in. Drawing on the lack of fit theory, we argue that the people and nature-oriented social responsibility efforts of an employee can be gender-stereotyped as feminine and masculine efforts respectively. We also explore employer authenticity to be an important signal during this process where job seekers evaluate a prospective employer and its actions to form a judgment. We test our hypotheses across two studies conducted in the field and the laboratory. Our results provide a nuanced understanding of women’s perceptions of fit based on social responsibility type and recruitment material wordings.