Identities between the lines: Re-aligning gender and professional identities in job advertisements

Abstract

Advertisements for male-dominated jobs tend to contain more masculine language, which can deter women from applying because it highlights the incongruence between their gender and professional identities. A commonly proposed intervention is to remove this masculine language to attract more women. However, research on masculinity and gender suggests that men can also experience incongruence with stereotypical expectations for masculinity. In this paper, we build theory to explain how a “gender de-biasing” intervention on masculine language in job advertisements for male-dominated jobs increases gender diversity of applicants by attracting more people (not only women, but also men) who may not strongly adhere to the expectations traditionally associated with male gender identity. Across an extensive database of 576 job postings and over 30,000 applicants from a large organization, a quasi-experiment in the field, and a pre-registered online experiment, we find that removing masculine language from job postings leads to an increase in application rates from individuals who appear incongruent with the masculine identity – including both women and men who identify as less masculine. Theoretically, our research suggests the importance of aligning multiple identities when signaling who is welcome to apply for job opportunities. Practically, our findings suggest a concrete, feasible intervention to increase the gender diversity of applicants.