Linguistics of Gender, and hiring.

Job adverts will often ask for a ‘great communicator’.

Often for a job where your verbal and listening skills are exercised all day long, you might be tasked with understanding complex needs and circumstances, as well as crafting a clear message and creating a precise impression for the brand.

Linguistics are a big player here, so we’ve researched some insights into the power of language in Recruitment and job adverts.

We want to attract the best talent, while ensuring that we don’t block anyone out of the picture in a competitive market. This involves looking at unconscious bias, identifying unnecessary expectations (such as years of experience), using gender neutral language, and more.

But… As many of us will have experienced, especially those of us involved in diversity or inclusion initiatives, the linguistic tools at our disposal can often fall short. 

The Technical Bit 

As a monolingual person without much knowledge of linguistic science, what I can offer is this: 

In English, we don’t use gendered nouns, meaning that whilst in Spanish ‘Gato’ would refer to a male cat and ‘Gata’ to a female one, to English speakers ‘Cat’ is gender neutral. However, the set of pronouns we use in English are built on the binary – male/female, masculine/feminine.

This is why it can be confusing or feel unnatural at first, when we use gender neutral pronouns such as ‘they/ them’ in conversation. Thankfully we are learning to use the correct identifiers despite force of habit.

Language is one of our earliest ways of interacting with the world as children; communicating, expressing our needs and thoughts, crafting our identity. Our first language shapes our understanding of the world. If it only refers to two genders, we are influenced to believe in that binary structure.

In German and Russian, there is a third linguistic gender, Neuter. In Zulu there are fourteen genders. The way we understand gender can evolve when we look to other cultures to gain a wider perspective.


The Social Bit

It goes beyond  gendered nouns and pronouns. Many of our descriptive words, which can apply to anything, are associated with masculine or feminine traits. 

This cuts more to the heart of gender roles and stereotypes.

You may have encountered writing tools that are designed to help recruiters craft neutral job specs. Their creators say they aim to ‘identify masculine and feminine words’. 

One example lists “ambitious” and “challenging” as masculine, but “Collaborative” and “support” as feminine.

This is something to unpack.

The logic seems to be that more active or combative words are masculine, and more emotional, interpersonal words are feminine. This probably stems from the historic gender roles of Man = protector/ warrior/ hunter, or more recently ‘breadwinner’, and Woman = mother/ caregiver/ nurturer; more domestic or passive traits.

I think we can all agree these are outdated.

There’s another article to be written about the patriarchal revision of history that has positioned gender roles as much more ingrained in ancient societies than they really were - but I digress. I appreciate we don’t have all day and I need to remain within the word count.

The impact of the linguistics perseveres. Ambitious vs Collaborative, Challenging vs Supportive.

I identify as a woman, and as a woman writing this article, I like to think that I am both ‘ambitious / challenging’ and also ‘collaborative / supportive’. However, we’d do better to avoid choosing between the two. To be ambitious and skilled at collaboration is surely not too much to ask?

Here’s a first hand example. In our office when writing business copy, I will often hear the phrase ‘Is this a bit fluffy?’

Fluffy is a great word, concisely explaining that the wording seems too emotionally driven, too associated with human and lifestyle topics rather than core business topics, and could be more professional, factual and hard-hitting. 

None of that has to do with gender.

If we said ‘is this a bit girly?’ we’d be adhering to an arbitrary notion that those ‘softer’ topics are the domain of women.

Back to Recruitment 

So what’s the point of it all? Back to the question of job descriptions.

If your perfect job applicant happens to be a woman, but she reads ‘looking for salesmen’ in the ad, she may be put off. Sometimes the power of language is subconscious, but you want your reader to connect with the words, making the job description memorable.

Equally, if you try to saturate a job description with ‘feminine’ words like ‘support’, you can alienate those ambitious and challenging women who want to be recognised as such.

How on earth are we to say what is female friendly? There are a lot of women in the world, they’re not all the same.

Be Inclusive

We can always be clear and accurate about the job, and avoid gender pronouns and assumptions that narrow down the pool of talent. And importantly, make the job advert itself accessible to a diverse pool of applicants.

But when it comes to being descriptive – shouldn’t we simply outline what the right person for the job needs to be like, instead of tailoring to a certain demographic?

That Ambitious Collaborator could be man, woman, non-binary, young, old, from any kind of background. 

They are the ones who will decide if they’re right for the role.