Dive Brief:

• A ZipRecruiter study uncovered that when recruiters remove all gender specific words from job advertisements, the number of applicants jumped by as much as 42%. "When companies remove gender-biased keywords, the payoff can be huge," Jeanne Anderson, senior VP of product marketing, said on the ZipRecruiter blog.
• The ZipRecruiter study also pointed out that nearly 70% of all the job advertisements posted contained what would be considered masculine words, such as 'leader', 'aggressive', and others. These kinds of words actually attract more men than women, on a subconscious level.
• Some industries are also more pre-dispositioned to have gender-biased job advertisements, such as the business sector, which accounted for 94% of the job listings, followed by STEM jobs and those in the insurance market.

Dive Insight:

The ZipRecruiter survey shows that while gender equality is a much touted goal, the traditional standards by which recruiters and HR professionals work have not changed much. Job advertisements are riddled with power words that speak mainly to men.

Corporate cultures that recruit in this way often don't provide much upward mobility for their capable women employees. Recent studies revealed that women are often overlooked for that key first promotion. For every 100 women that are promoted, 130 men are promoted. Unless companies change attitudes about gender in the workplace, recruitment will continue to prevent women from taking leadership positions in industries where their skills are desperately needed.