Gender bias job adverts could stop women from entering senior roles

You probably know you shouldn’t include the phrase “men only” in a job advert. But did you realise the way you craft your ad could be having the same effect?

Totaljobs analysed over 75,000 of job ads on their site and found that hidden bias affects how job descriptions are written, read and applied for.

Men are more likely to respond to adverts with words such as ‘active’, ‘logic’ or ‘headstrong’, whereas women were more likely to consider roles which included words like ‘polite’, ‘honest’ and ‘interpersonal’.

This becomes a problem when considering that adverts for more senior roles tended to use language attractive to men. For example, ads for Directors tended to be male-based 55% of the time, and female-biased in 32% of cases. Job titles that include the phrase 'assistant', however, strongly lean towards female-gendered language (28% male bias vs. 58% female bias)