An app called Gender Decoder has been created to help recruiters better target women and BAME candidates – by doing away with gender-coded language.
Designed by Kat Matfield, a Service Designer and Product Manager at Adaptive Lab, the web-based app is based on an algorithm that counts gender-coded words to determine a bias.
Matfield cites a University of Waterloo and Duke research paper, “Evidence That Gendered Wording in Job Advertisements Exist and Sustains Gender Inequality”, published in the Personality and Social Psychology 2011 journal.
The research showed that job adverts can put women off applying with the use of words such as ‘active’, ‘outspoken’ and ‘decisive’. The effect didn’t seem to happen the other way round; men weren’t affected by feminine words such as ‘considerate’, ‘understand’ and ‘loyal’.
Made by Many themselves, a call for senior designers pulled in an 85% male response – which prompted them to consider whether language was a factor.
They changed their approach, and the numbers spoke for themselves. The ad was changed to focus less on ‘fearlessness’ to being ‘thoughtful’. Other factors notwithstanding (where it was advertised, how the criteria was listed etc.), the result was a 35% increase in women applicants.
The app shows that developing inclusivity and diversity isn’t difficult – it simply starts with speaking your candidates’ language.
If you’re looking at a pile of CVs or just glancing around the office, and see that there’s a wider pool of talent you could be pulling from, then try copying and pasting your job ad into the Gender Decoded app for free.
You can also contribute to the app – its code is on GitHub, and Matfield welcomes suggestions on the wordlists it’s powered by.