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Evidence That Gendered Wording in Job Advertisements Exists and Sustains Gender Inequality

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

March 2011
101(1):109-28

DOI:10.1037/a0022530

Source
PubMed

Authors:

Justin P. Friesen

University of Winnipeg

Social dominance theory (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999) contends that institutional-level mechanisms exist that reinforce and perpetuate existing group-based inequalities, but very few such mechanisms have been empirically demonstrated. We propose that gendered wording (i.e., masculine- and feminine-themed words, such as those associated with gender stereotypes) may be a heretofore unacknowledged, institutional-level mechanism of inequality maintenance. Employing both archival and experimental analyses, the present research demonstrates that gendered wording commonly employed in job recruitment materials can maintain gender inequality in traditionally male-dominated occupations. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated the existence of subtle but systematic wording differences within a randomly sampled set of job advertisements. Results indicated that job advertisements for male-dominated areas employed greater masculine wording (i.e., words associated with male stereotypes, such as leader, competitive, dominant) than advertisements within female-dominated areas. No difference in the presence of feminine wording (i.e., words associated with female stereotypes, such as support, understand, interpersonal) emerged across male- and female-dominated areas. Next, the consequences of highly masculine wording were tested across 3 experimental studies. When job advertisements were constructed to include more masculine than feminine wording, participants perceived more men within these occupations (Study 3), and importantly, women found these jobs less appealing (Studies 4 and 5). Results confirmed that perceptions of belongingness (but not perceived skills) mediated the effect of gendered wording on job appeal (Study 5). The function of gendered wording in maintaining traditional gender divisions, implications for gender parity, and theoretical models of inequality are discussed.

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Composition of Coded Advertisements, Study 1 Advertisements Occupation N %

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Standardized path estimates from Study 5 (all female participants). Advertisement wording coded as 1 masculine wording and 0 feminine wording. p .05. p .001.

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Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Evidence That Gendered Wording in Job Advertisements

Exists and Sustains Gender Inequality

Danielle Gaucher, Justin Friesen, and Aaron C. Kay

Online First Publication, March 7, 2011. doi: 10.1037/a0022530

CITATION

Gaucher, D., Friesen, J., & Kay, A. C. (2011, March 7). Evidence That Gendered Wording in

Job Advertisements Exists and Sustains Gender Inequality. Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0022530

Evidence That Gendered Wording in Job Advertisements Exists and

Sustains Gender Inequality

Danielle Gaucher and Justin Friesen

University of Waterloo

Aaron C. Kay

Duke University

Social dominance theory (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999) contends that institutional-level mechanisms exist

that reinforce and perpetuate existing group-based inequalities, but very few such mechanisms have been

empirically demonstrated. We propose that gendered wording (i.e., masculine- and feminine-themed

words, such as those associated with gender stereotypes) may be a heretofore unacknowledged,

institutional-level mechanism of inequality maintenance. Employing both archival and experimental

analyses, the present research demonstrates that gendered wording commonly employed in job recruit-

ment materials can maintain gender inequality in traditionally male-dominated occupations. Studies 1 and

2 demonstrated the existence of subtle but systematic wording differences within a randomly sampled set

of job advertisements. Results indicated that job advertisements for male-dominated areas employed

greater masculine wording (i.e., words associated with male stereotypes, such as leader,competitive,

dominant) than advertisements within female-dominated areas. No difference in the presence of feminine

wording (i.e., words associated with female stereotypes, such as support,understand,interpersonal)

emerged across male- and female-dominated areas. Next, the consequences of highly masculine wording

were tested across 3 experimental studies. When job advertisements were constructed to include more

masculine than feminine wording, participants perceived more men within these occupations (Study 3),

and importantly, women found these jobs less appealing (Studies 4 and 5). Results confirmed that

perceptions of belongingness (but not perceived skills) mediated the effect of gendered wording on job

appeal (Study 5). The function of gendered wording in maintaining traditional gender divisions,

implications for gender parity, and theoretical models of inequality are discussed.

Keywords: inequality, intergroup relations, gender inequality, social dominance, belongingness

Despite widely touted egalitarian ideals, women in North Amer-

ica continue to be underrepresented in many areas of employment

including high levels of business, the natural sciences, and engi-

neering. In Canada, for example, less than 20% of engineering

undergraduates and only 9% of registered professional engineers

are women (Engineers Canada, 2010). A similar picture emerges

in the United States. Women comprise only 2.4% of Fortune 500

chief executive officers (Catalyst, 2008a), 20% of full professors

in the natural sciences (Catalyst, 2008b), and 11% of engineers

(U.S. Department of Labor, 2007). Why do women continue to be

underrepresented in these areas?

Individual-level factors that serve to keep women out of male-

dominated areas are well documented. Such factors manifest

within individuals in the form of beliefs, attitudes, and other

motivated tendencies. For example, system justification research

(see Jost & Banaji, 1994; Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004) has dem-

onstrated that injunctification—people’s tendency to defend the

status quo via construing whatever currently is as natural and

desirable, and the way that things ought to be (Kay, Gaucher, et al.,

2009; Kay & Zanna, 2009)—is an individual-level process that can

account, at least in part, for women’s continued underrepresenta-

tion in male-dominated areas. Female participants who learned

about prevailing inequality (i.e., women’s underrepresentation in

the domains of business and politics) subsequently defended this

inequality as desirable and natural, an effect that was most pro-

nounced when system justification concerns were experimentally

heightened (Kay, Gaucher, et al., 2009).

Likewise, benevolent sexist beliefs (Glick & Fiske, 1996,

2001a, 2001b) and complementary (see Jost & Kay, 2005; Kay et

al., 2007) or compensatory (see Kay, Czaplin´ski, & Jost, 2009;

Kervyn, Yzerbyt, Judd, & Nunes, 2009; Napier, Thorisdottir, &

Jost, 2010) stereotypes are especially well suited to justify gender

inequalities. Endorsing the warm but incompetent stereotype of

housewives justifies women’s domestic role and exclusion from

the workplace (Cuddy, Fiske, & Glick, 2004; Fiske, Cuddy, Glick,

& Xu, 2002). Similarly, the competent but cold stereotype of

Danielle Gaucher and Justin Friesen, Department of Psychology, Uni-

versity of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada; Aaron C. Kay, Depart-

ment of Psychology and Neuroscience and Fuqua School of Business,

Duke University.

This research was prepared with the support of Social Sciences and

Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Doctoral Fellowships to

Danielle Gaucher and Justin Friesen and research grants to Aaron C. Kay

from SSHRC and the Ontario Ministry for Innovation. We thank Fatima

Mitchell, Sandra Olheiser, and Gary Waller at Co-operative Education and

Career Services, University of Waterloo, for their valuable assistance with

Study 2.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Danielle

Gaucher, who is now at the Department of Psychology, Princeton Univer-

sity, Princeton, NJ 08540-1010, or Justin Friesen, Department of Psychol-

ogy, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo,

Ontario N2L 3G1, Canada. E-mail: dgaucher@princeton.edu or

jp2fries@uwaterloo.ca

2011, Vol. ●●, No. ●, 000– 000 0022-3514/11/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0022530

working women has been used as justification for keeping women

out of (male-dominated) management positions (Fiske, Bersoff,

Borgida, Deaux, & Heilman, 1991; Phelan, Moss-Racusin, &

Rudman, 2008; Rudman, 1998; Rudman & Glick, 1999, 2001).

There is much less psychological research, however, document-

ing the institutional-level contributors to gender inequality.

Institutional-level contributors are those that manifest within the

social structure itself (e.g., public policy, law). According to social

dominance theory (SDT; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999), these

institutional-level mechanisms exist to reinforce and perpetuate

existing group-based inequality. Such contributors are often—

though certainly not always—so deeply embedded within the

social structure that they are overlooked by society at large

(Deutsch, 2006). These types of institutional-level factors remain

highly underresearched (Pratto, Sidanius, & Levin, 2006).

But despite the difficulty of detecting these systematic or insti-

tutional factors, their effects on individual-level psychological

processes are profound (e.g., increased antiegalitarianism, racism,

and victim blaming; Haley & Sidanius, 2005). Indeed, as Haley

and Sidanius (2005, p. 189) wrote:

Social hierarchies are in large part created, preserved, and recreated

by social institutions, or organizations. While lone individuals can

help to strengthen these hierarchies (e.g. by voting in favor of laws

that disproportionately handicap low-status groups) or to attenuate

them (e.g. by voting in favor of laws that instead help to level the

playing field), institutions should be able to impact hierarchies to a far

greater degree.

In the current research we identify an unacknowledged, institution-

level factor that may serve to reinforce women’s underrepresen-

tation in traditionally male-dominated occupations: gendered

wording used in job recruitment materials. Specifically, we inves-

tigate whether masculine-themed words (such as competitive,dom-

inate, and leader) emerge within job advertisements in male-

dominated areas, and whether the mere presence of these

masculine words dissuade women from applying to the area be-

cause they cue that women do not belong.

Job Advertisements as Institutional-Level

Contributors to Inequality

Women’s attrition in male-dominated fields, it has been pro-

posed, spikes at specific points along the career path, such as

between one’s master of science or master of arts degree and

doctorate, or at hiring and promotion (Holmes & O’Connell, 2007;

Tesch, Wood, Helwig, & Nattinger, 1995). In the geosciences, for

example, 38% of PhD graduates but only 26% of assistant profes-

sors are women (Holmes & O’Connell, 2007). It is plausible, then,

that institutional-level barriers to women’s participation in male-

dominated domains occur most prominently at certain critical

points. In the present research we focus on job recruitment as one

of those critical points.

Over 30 years ago, Bem and Bem (1973) investigated how job

advertisements that overtly specified a preference for male appli-

cants discouraged women from applying. They found that explicit

references to men as candidates for specific jobs and placing

advertisements in sex-segregated newspaper columns discouraged

men and women from applying to opposite-sex positions. In the

first of two seminal studies, participants were presented with a

series of job advertisements that were either sex biased (i.e., made

explicit reference to men as candidates for traditionally male-

dominated jobs such as lineman and women as candidates for

traditionally female jobs such as stewardess), unbiased (i.e., made

reference to both men and women as candidates), or sex reversed

(i.e., referred to women as ideal candidates for the typically male-

dominated jobs and men as ideal candidates for the traditionally

female jobs). The results were clear: Women were more interested

in male-dominated jobs when the advertisements were unbiased,

making reference to both men and women as candidates, than

when the advertisements made reference only to men (Bem &

Bem, 1973). Women reported the greatest interest in the male-

dominated jobs when the advertisements were sex reversed, ex-

plicitly referring to women as ideal candidates.

In a second study, female participants were presented with job

advertisements from a U.S. newspaper and asked to rate their

preference for each job. Half the participants read job advertise-

ments precisely as they appeared in the paper: sex segregated

under jobs–male and jobs–female columns. The other half read

identical advertisements, but this time they were integrated and

listed alphabetically with no sex labeling. Women preferred male-

dominated jobs when they were presented in the integrated rather

than the sex-segregated columns. Notably, this finding emerged

despite a disclaimer on both sets of advertisements citing that “job

seekers should assume that the advertiser will consider applicants

of either sex in compliance with the laws against discrimination”

(Bem & Bem, 1973, p. 15).

This type of bias in job advertisements, however, likely no

longer exists. On the heels of U.S. civil rights legislation (Title VII

of the 1964 Civil Rights Act) deeming this practice unconstitu-

tional, and the advent of the Equal Employment Opportunity

Commission, explicit sex segregation of advertisements had

abruptly ended by 1973 (Pedriana & Abraham, 2006). As a result,

it is no longer the case that job advertisements deter men or women

from applying to specific positions through explicit requests for

men or women or use of pronouns such as he or she. To many, this

Advertisements

Occupation N%

Male dominated 231 47

Plumber 36 7

Electrician 55 11

Mechanic 14 3

Engineer 59 12

Security guard 22 4

Computer programmer 45 9

Female dominated 262 53

Human resources professional 45 9

Bookkeeper 55 11

Registered nurse 57 11

Early childhood educator 50 10

Administrative assistant 55 11

GENDERED WORDING AND INEQUALITY

randomly sampled job advertisements for university students that

were targeted at stereotypically male- and female-dominated fac-

ulties (e.g., engineering vs. arts, respectively) but that were from

hundreds of employers. The University of Waterloo has the largest

cooperative education program in Canada. Students in the co-op

program alternate between terms of on-campus coursework and

off-campus work placements. Each term hundreds of companies

advertise thousands of student jobs that students can access

through a university website. We were granted access to the text

of 3,640 of these job advertisements targeted at six university

faculties.

In contrast to the online advertisements in Study 1, which were

organized by occupation title (e.g., engineer, plumber), the co-op

job advertisements were organized by university faculty (e.g.,

engineering, arts, applied health sciences). Employers could

choose to target their advertisements to students in engineering,

arts, or another faculty. There is generally a correspondence be-

tween the faculty targeted and the domain of the job; for example,

jobs targeted at students in the engineering faculty are almost

always within the engineering field, but the job titles themselves

within that faculty varied. By categorizing advertisements by fac-

ulty instead of by specific job titles, it ensured that the wording

effects were not particular to jobs titled “engineer” or “computer

programmer” but reflected a general trend within the engineering

or computer science fields. Again, in keeping with SDT and SRT,

we expected to find more masculine wording in advertisements

targeted at students in male-dominated faculties (i.e., from more

male-dominated fields) than in advertisements targeted at students

in female-dominated faculties. Furthermore, on the basis of the

findings from Study 1, we expected to find no difference in the

amount of feminine wording found across subject areas.

Method

Job advertisements (N⫽3,640) were randomly selected from

the on-campus co-operative job posting site at the University of

Waterloo. Given the university’s emphasis on engineering, math,

and computer science programs, there were more job advertise-

ments targeted to typically male-dominated faculties (n⫽3,116)

than to typically female-dominated faculties (n⫽524). The job

advertisements targeted to typically male-dominated faculties were

sampled from engineering (n⫽1,682), math and computer science

(n⫽920), science (n⫽205), business and economics (n⫽209),

and accounting and financial management (n⫽100). The job

advertisements targeted to typically female-dominated faculties

were from applied health studies (n⫽205), arts (n⫽160), and

environmental studies (n⫽159). All the faculties that were

represented on the co-op job posting site were included in the

present analyses. As in Study 1, we coded each advertisement for

the percentage of masculine and feminine words contained in the

advertisement using linguistic software (Pennebaker et al., 2007).

In this sample, masculine and feminine scores were again corre-

lated but only weakly, r(3640) ⫽.05, p⫽.001.

Results

To test for wording differences, we conducted a 2 (faculty

advertised: male dominated vs. female dominated) ⫻2 (wording:

masculine vs. feminine wording) mixed model ANOVA, with

wording as the repeated measure. A main effect of wording

emerged, F(1, 3638) ⫽191.67, p⬍.001, ␩

⫽.050, indicating

that advertisements, overall, contained more masculine words

(M⫽1.09%, SD ⫽0.88%) than feminine words (M⫽0.67%,

SD ⫽0.70%). A main effect of faculty also emerged, F(1, 3638) ⫽

18.76, p⬍.001, ␩

⫽.005, indicating there were more coded

words within advertisements targeted at male-dominated faculties

(M⫽0.90%, SD ⫽0.83%) than within advertisements targeted at

female-dominated faculties (M⫽0.78%, SD ⫽0.73%).

Of greater interest, once again the predicted Wording ⫻Job

Type interaction emerged, F(1, 3638) ⫽14.76, p⬍.001, ␩

⫽

.004 (see Figure 2). As expected, there was a greater percentage of

masculine words within advertisements for male-dominated facul-

ties (M⫽1.12%, SD ⫽0.89%) than within advertisements for

female-dominated faculties (M⫽0.91%, SD ⫽0.76%), t(3638) ⫽

5.23, p⬍.001, d⫽0.24. There was no difference in the presence

of feminine words between male-dominated (M⫽0.67%, SD ⫽

0.70%) and female-dominated faculties (M⫽0.65%, SD ⫽

0.68%), t(3638) ⫽0.56, p⫽.56, d⫽0.03.

Discussion: Studies 1 and 2

Across two independent samples, job advertisements for male-

dominated occupations contained more stereotypically masculine

Figure 1. Mean percentage of gendered wording as a function of occu-

pation area (Study 1). Error bars indicate standard error.

Figure 2. Mean percentage of gendered wording as a function of occu-

pation area (Study 2). Error bars indicate standard error.

6GAUCHER, FRIESEN, AND KAY

words than job advertisements for female-dominated occupations.

Furthermore, in both cases there was no difference in the presence

of stereotypically feminine words across male- and female-

dominated occupations. This lack of an effect for feminine word-

ing suggests that gendered wording, at least in the current studies,

is not simply the result of a perceptual process whereby people

make inferences about the traits required for jobs based on roles

traditionally held by men and women. Next, we sought to test

whether these types of wording differences affect individual-level

psychological functioning in a way that can lead to the perpetua-

tion of gender divisions. Does the inclusion of more masculine

stereotype-linked words, like the ones we systematically found in

the advertisements for male-dominated jobs, make a given job less

appealing to individual female candidates? Three laboratory ex-

periments (Studies 3–5) tested the causal effects of gendered

wording on perceptions of gender diversity, anticipated feelings of

belongingness, and, ultimately, job appeal.

Study 3: The Effect of Gendered Wording on

Diversity Perceptions

In Study 3 participants read a series of job advertisements

manipulated to be masculinely or femininely worded and then

estimated the perceived gender diversity within the various occu-

pations. We created advertisements for traditionally male-

dominated (engineer, plumber) and female-dominated (registered

nurse, administrative assistant) occupations, as well as two neutral

jobs (real estate agent, retail sales manager). The neutral jobs

allowed for testing of gendered wording effects within occupations

not as strongly associated with either gender stereotype. Unsur-

prisingly, regardless of an advertisement’s wording, people will

likely perceive more men within some occupations (e.g., engineer-

ing) than other occupations (e.g., nursing). We hypothesized, how-

ever, that gendered wording will have an additional effect, inde-

pendent from the type of job, such that people would perceive

more men within jobs that were masculinely worded.

Method

Forty-three Canadian-born introductory psychology students

participated online (28 women, 15 men; 65% White, 21% Asian,

5% Indian, and 9% other or not listed) in exchange for course

credit.

Using a within-subjects design, we provided each participant

with six job advertisements to read. Two were from each job type

(male dominated, female dominated, neutral). Within each job

type, one advertisement used more feminine wording, and the

other used more masculine wording. To create the advertisements,

we used common phrases from the advertisements sampled in

Study 1 to create a generic advertisement for each job (70 –115

words). Each included a company description, job description, and

qualifications. Wording was manipulated by selectively substitut-

ing masculine and feminine words from the lists used in Studies 1

and 2. This resulted in two versions of each advertisement, one

masculinely worded and one femininely worded.

For example,

the masculinely worded advertisement for a registered nurse

stated, “We are determined to deliver superior medical treatment

tailored to each individual patient,” whereas the femininely

worded advertisement stated, “We are committed to providing top

quality health care that is sympathetic to the needs of our patients”

(emphasis added). Advertisements are included in Appendix B.

To control for any idiosyncrasies of specific jobs (e.g., a general

preference for engineering over plumbing) that might be con-

founded with wording, we counterbalanced across individual oc-

cupations. For half the participants, the masculinely worded ad-

vertisements were plumber, retail sales manager, and registered

nurse (with the three remaining advertisements femininely

worded). For the other half, the masculinely worded advertise-

ments were engineer, real estate agent, and administrative assistant

(with the three remaining advertisements femininely worded).

Presentation order was also counterbalanced.

After each advertisement, participants completed two items

assessing their perception of the number of women within each

job that they read. Specifically, participants were asked, “How

many women . . .” (a) “work in this company?” and (b) “work

in the position being advertised?” on a Likert scale ranging

from 0 (0% women)to20(100% women), each point labeled in

5% increments.

Furthermore, after each advertisement participants were asked

which factors had affected their perceptions of that advertisement;

not one participant mentioned wording.

Results and Discussion

To test whether masculine and feminine wording actually af-

fects participants’ perceptions of the gender diversity within each

occupation, we conducted a 3 (job type: male dominated vs.

neutral vs. female dominated) ⫻2 (wording: masculine vs. fem-

inine) ⫻2 (participant gender: male vs. female) mixed model

ANOVA, with job type and wording as repeated measures and

gender between-subjects. First, we report the effects not associated

with the wording predictions. For ease of interpretation, raw scale

scores are also reported as percentages of women in square brack-

ets. A main effect of job type emerged, F(2, 80) ⫽199.32, p⬍

.001, ␩

⫽.833, indicating, as expected, that traditionally male-

dominated occupations were estimated to have fewer women (M⫽

4.27 [20%], SD ⫽3.31 [16%]) than neutral (M⫽12.35 [59%],

SD ⫽3.03 [14%]), t(80) ⫽16.12, p⬍.001, d⫽2.62, and

female-dominated occupations (M⫽12.35 [59%], SD ⫽3.49

[17%]), t(80) ⫽16.50, p⬍.001, d⫽2.13. Estimates of neutral

and female-dominated occupations did not differ from one another,

t(80) ⫽1.19, p⫽.24, d⫽0.00. This main effect, however, was

qualified by a significant Job Type ⫻Gender interaction, F(2,

80) ⫽5.00, p⬍.05, ␩

⫽.011, reflecting the tendency for female

participants (M⫽13.20 [63%], SD ⫽2.83 [13%]) to estimate

greater numbers of women in neutral occupations than estimated

by male participants (M⫽10.64 [51%], SD ⫽2.73 [13%]; see

Table 2).

Of most relevance, the predicted wording main effect also

emerged, F(1, 40) ⫽10.40, p⫽.02, ␩

⫽.206. People perceived

As a manipulation check, each advertisement was coded with the same

procedure as in Studies 1 and 2, confirming that the six masculinely

worded advertisements had more masculine (M⫽8.40%, SD ⫽1.75%)

than feminine words (M⫽0.00%, SD ⫽0.00%), t(5) ⫽12.41, p⬍.05,

and the six femininely worded advertisements had more feminine (M⫽

6.86%, SD ⫽1.67%) than masculine words (M⫽0.15%, SD ⫽0.36%),

t(5) ⫽8.45, p⬍.05.

GENDERED WORDING AND INEQUALITY

fewer women within the occupations advertised with masculine

wording (M⫽9.06 [43%], SD ⫽4.80 [23%]) than occupations

advertised with feminine wording (M⫽10.26 [49%], SD ⫽5.20

[25%]). Wording did not interact with gender or job type ( ps⬎

.10), which suggests that participants perceived more men within

jobs that had masculinely worded advertisements than jobs that

had femininely worded advertisements, regardless of participant

gender or whether that occupation was traditionally male or female

dominated.

Study 4: Job Appeal and Belongingness

In Studies 1 and 2 we found that male-dominated jobs tend to

employ more masculine wording in their recruitment materials.

Study 3 demonstrated that these wording differences may not be

entirely innocuous: Masculine wording led people to predict that

there are relatively more men within the relevant occupation. In

Study 4 we investigated another consequence of gendered word-

ing, one that is more crucial in order for these institutional-level

biases to actually maintain gender inequality: that of job appeal.

We hypothesized that masculine wording may actually reduce

women’s interest in a job because it signals to them that they may

not belong. To test this hypothesis, we used the same experimental

materials as in Study 3. This time, however, rather than assess

people’s perception of the number of women in a given occupa-

tion, we assessed job appeal and anticipated belongingness.

Method

One hundred and two English-fluent introductory psychology

students participated online for course credit. Six were excluded

(four failed to specify their gender, and two were outliers), leaving

96 participants (63 women, 33 men; 45% White, 31% Asian, 10%

Indian, and 13% other or not listed).

Using the same job advertisements and within-subjects design

as in Study 3, we gave each participant six job advertisements to

read. As in Study 3, presentation order was counterbalanced. There

was no effect of order.

After each advertisement participants completed six items as-

sessing job appeal (“This job is appealing”; “I think I could enjoy

this job”; “This is not a job I would want,” reverse coded; “This

company would be a good employer”; “This job looks interesting”;

and “This company seems like a great place to work”; alphas

ranged from .90 to .94 for each advertisement). Four items assess-

ing anticipated belongingness (“I could fit in well at this com-

pany”; “I’m similar to the people who work in this career”; “My

values and this company’s values are similar”; and “The type of

people who would apply for this job are very different from me,”

reverse coded). The four-item measure of belongingness was cre-

ated by adapting items from Walton and Cohen’s (2007) Belong-

ingness Scale, making them specific to the occupational domain.

Items 1–3 were virtually identical to items used by Walton and

Cohen (2007). Item 4 was designed to more fully assess the

similarity component of belongingness. All four items showed

good reliabilities, with alphas ranging from .80 to .86 for each

advertisement. All items used a Likert scale ranging from 1

(strongly disagree)to7(strongly agree).

Last, after reading all the advertisements, participants ranked

them from most appealing to least appealing. Finally, as in Study

3, after each advertisement participants were asked which factors

had affected their perceptions of that advertisement; not one par-

ticipant mentioned wording.

We predicted a Wording ⫻Gender interaction, in which women

judge masculinely worded jobs less appealing than femininely

worded jobs. For men, there are two possibilities. On the one hand,

they might show the opposite pattern and prefer masculinely

worded jobs to femininely worded jobs. On the other hand, higher

status groups—such as men—might be less concerned with cues of

belongingness because of their already secure high status in the

gender hierarchy. Thus, gendered wording may not affect men’s

job appeal ratings. We also tested whether gendered wording

effects on job appeal are driven, at least in part, by expected

belongingness.

Results

Subsequent analyses used a 3 (job type: male dominated vs.

neutral vs. female dominated) ⫻2 (wording: masculine vs. fem-

inine) ⫻2 (participant gender: male vs. female) mixed measures

ANOVA, with job type and wording as repeated measures and

gender between-subjects.

Job appeal: Likert ratings. First we report analyses that are

not central to our main hypotheses. A main effect of job type

emerged, F(2, 188) ⫽4.57, p⫽.01, ␩

⫽.046. In general,

male-dominated occupations were less appealing (M⫽4.07, SD ⫽

1.45) than either neutral (M⫽4.50, SD ⫽1.30), t(188) ⫽2.57,

p⫽.02, d⫽0.33, or female-dominated occupations (M⫽4.50,

SD ⫽1.39), t(188) ⫽2.71, p⫽.009, d⫽0.34. Appeal ratings of

the neutral and female-dominated occupations did not differ from

one another (t⬍1). No other main effects emerged.

Of primary importance, the predicted Wording ⫻Gender inter-

action emerged, F(1, 94) ⫽9.70, p⫽.002, ␩

⫽.094 (see

Figure 3). Women found occupations that were masculinely

worded less appealing (M⫽4.16, SD ⫽1.41) than femininely

worded occupations (M⫽4.50, SD ⫽1.42), F(1, 62) ⫽6.74, p⫽

.01, ␩

⫽.098. Men only marginally showed the opposite pattern,

tending to rate masculinely worded advertisements (M⫽4.61,

SD ⫽1.34) as more appealing than femininely worded advertise-

ments (M⫽4.22, SD ⫽1.29), F(1, 32) ⫽3.58, p⫽.07, ␩

⫽

.100. Did the effect of wording vary between job types (tradition-

ally male vs. female)? The absence of a three-way interaction (F⬍

Table 2

Perceived Gender Diversity Within Occupations as a Function

of Participant Sex, Study 3

Gender

Male-dominated

occupations

Neutral

occupations

Female-dominated

occupations

Female

M4.46

(21%) 13.20

(63%) 12.26

(58%)

SD 3.50 (17%) 2.83 (13%) 3.47 (17%)

Male

M3.93

(19%) 10.64

(51%) 12.54

(60%)

SD 3.05 (15%) 2.73 (13%) 3.59 (17%)

Note. Means and standard deviations reflect the 21-point scale seen by

participants. For ease of interpretation, raw scale scores are also reported in

parentheses as percentages of women. Within rows, different subscripts

indicate means differ ( p⬍.05) by least significant difference test.

8GAUCHER, FRIESEN, AND KAY

1) suggests no; regardless of whether the occupations were tradi-

tionally more male or female dominated, participants found jobs

most attractive when there was a match between their gender and

the gendered wording used in the advertisement.

Job appeal: Relative rankings. Rankings were coded so that

higher rankings indicated more appeal (e.g., 6 indicated the most

appealing job, 1 indicated the least appealing).

A main effect of

job type emerged, F(2, 180) ⫽9.45, p⬍.05, ␩

⫽.095.

Participants ranked male-dominated occupations as less appealing

(M⫽2.88, SD ⫽1.62) than neutral (M⫽3.80, SD ⫽1.59),

t(180) ⫽4.00, p⬍.001, d⫽0.61, and female-dominated occu-

pations (M⫽3.82, SD ⫽1.75), t(180) ⫽4.17, p⬍.001, d⫽0.53.

This effect was qualified by a significant Job Type ⫻Gender

interaction, F(2, 180) ⫽7.21, p⫽.001, ␩

⫽.074, indicating that

women ranked male-dominated jobs (M⫽2.58, SD ⫽1.49) lower

than neutral (M⫽3.97, SD ⫽1.57), t(118) ⫽6.40, p⬍.001, d⫽

0.86, and female-dominated jobs (M⫽3.95, SD ⫽1.70), t(118) ⫽

6.73, p⬍.001, d⫽0.82, whereas appeal rankings of the neutral

and female-dominated occupations did not differ from one another

(t⬍1). Men ranked all three job types equally (M

male

⫽3.44,

SD ⫽1.73; M

neutral

⫽3.50, SD ⫽1.61; M

female

⫽3.56, SD ⫽

1.82; all ts⬍1).

Importantly, the predicted Wording ⫻Gender interaction again

emerged, F(1, 90) ⫽8.68, p⫽.004, ␩

⫽.088. Women ranked

masculinely worded jobs less favorably (M⫽3.25, SD ⫽1.74)

than femininely worded jobs (M⫽3.75, SD ⫽1.64), F(1, 59) ⫽

7.74, p⫽.007, ␩

⫽.120. For men there was a nonsignificant

opposite trend, to prefer masculinely worded jobs (M⫽3.75,

SD ⫽1.78) over femininely worded jobs (M⫽3.25, SD ⫽1.61),

F(1, 31) ⫽2.43, p⫽.13, ␩

⫽.073.

Belongingness. First we report analyses not central to our

main hypotheses. A main effect of job type emerged, F(2, 188) ⫽

4.84, p⫽.009, ␩

⫽.049, so that, overall, less anticipated

belongingness was reported in neutral and male-dominated jobs

than in female-dominated jobs, but this was qualified by a mar-

ginally significant Job Type ⫻Gender interaction, F(2, 188) ⫽

2.86, p⫽.06, ␩

⫽.029, so that only women anticipated less

belongingness within male-dominated occupations, whereas men

showed no differences. Means and follow-up tests are reported in

Table 3.

Most relevant to the main hypothesis, the predicted Wording ⫻

Gender interaction emerged, F(1, 94) ⫽6.16, p⫽.02, ␩

⫽.061.

Women reported greater anticipated belongingness within occupa-

tions that were femininely than masculinely worded (M⫽4.31,

SD ⫽1.35 vs. M⫽3.98, SD ⫽1.29, respectively), F(1, 62) ⫽

6.35, p⫽.01, ␩

⫽.093. For men, there was no effect of gendered

wording, with no difference between femininely and masculinely

worded occupations (M⫽3.99, SD ⫽1.16 vs. M⫽4.23, SD ⫽

1.31, respectively; p⬎.22).

Women found femininely worded advertisements more appeal-

ing than masculinely worded advertisements. Next we tested

whether this difference in belongingness drove the observed dif-

ferences in appeal. Because this is a within-subjects design, dif-

ference scores were calculated for job appeal (Likert ratings) and

anticipated belongingness by subtracting the mean rating for fem-

ininely worded advertisements from the mean rating for mascu-

linely worded advertisements (following Judd, Kenny, & Mc-

Clelland, 2001). Therefore, for both difference scores a higher

value indicated a preference (i.e., more appeal or more belonging-

ness) for masculinely worded jobs over femininely worded jobs.

We tested mediation using structural equation modeling (AMOS

16.0) and the procedures outlined in Sadler, Ethier, and Woody (in

press); MacKinnon, Lockwood, and Williams (2004); and Shrout

and Bolger (2002). Using 5,000 bootstrapped samples, we calcu-

lated path estimates and bias-corrected 95% confidence intervals

(CIs) of the indirect effect of gender on job appeal via belonging-

ness. Gender (dummy coded: female ⫽1, male ⫽0) predicted the

anticipated belongingness difference score (␤⫽⫺.25, p⫽.01), so

that women anticipated less belongingness within the jobs adver-

tised with masculine wording. This reduction in perceived belong-

ingness predicted less job appeal (␤⫽.72, p⬍.001) and was a

significant indirect effect (␤⫽⫺.18, 95% CI [⫺.04, ⫺.32], p⫽

.02). Because the 95% CI of the indirect effect did not include

zero, we can be confident (␣⫽.05) that the women found

masculinely worded advertisements less appealing, at least in part,

because of the corresponding decrease in anticipated belonging-

ness.

Discussion

Beyond affecting people’s perception of gender diversity within

an occupation (Study 3), increases in masculine wording were

For the relative rankings, four additional participants were excluded

because they ranked the same job multiple times (e.g., as both first and

third).

Figure 3. Job appeal as a function of gendered wording and participant

gender (Study 4), on a scale of 1 to 7. Error bars represent standard error.

Table 3

Belongingness as a Function of Participant Sex and Job Type,

Study 4

Male-

dominated

occupations

Neutral

occupations

Female-

dominated

occupations

Gender M SD M SD M SD

Female 3.79

1.31 4.24

1.28 4.41

1.33

Male 4.10

1.24 3.95

1.15 4.28

1.32

Note. Within rows, different subscripts indicate means differ ( p⬍.05)

by least significant difference test, on a scale of 1 to 7.

GENDERED WORDING AND INEQUALITY

sufficient to decrease women’s job appeal ratings and their antic-

ipated belongingness in specific occupations. Men displayed only

a slight preference for masculinely worded advertisements, and

gendered wording did not affect men’s anticipated feelings of

belongingness. This latter finding supports our contention that

masculine wording reflected in real job advertisements primarily

serves to keep women out of the areas that men typically occupy.

In contrast, women were deterred from masculinely worded jobs,

finding them less appealing, compared with the same types of jobs

advertised with feminine wording. These effects occurred both

when the jobs were evaluated independently (in the case of the job

appeal Likert measure) and, more strongly, when participants

explicitly compared them with one another (the job appeal ranking

measure). Strikingly, the type of job that women read about (i.e.,

engineer, real estate broker, nurse) did not interact with wording.

Across all types of jobs, women ranked jobs more negatively when

they were written with masculine wording.

In addition, women anticipated less belongingness in jobs that

were masculinely worded, and these changes in anticipated be-

longingness mediated the effects on appeal. Thus, this study also

provides evidence for the hypothesis that masculine wording is

unappealing to women precisely because it conveys that they may

not belong in that job. In Study 5 we sought further evidence for

this hypothesis and sought to rule out a potential alternative driver

of the observed effects.

Study 5: The Effect of Gendered Wording on Job

Appeal, Personal Skill, and Belongingness

Studies 3 and 4 demonstrated the effects of gendered wording

on job appeal and suggested that perceptions of gender diversity

and anticipated belongingness may be driving those effects. How-

ever, despite the general importance of belongingness (Baumeister

& Leary, 1995; Ryan & Deci, 2000; Walton & Cohen, 2007), it

may not be the sole driver of gendered wording effects. One could

argue that the manipulation of gendered wording changed the

qualifications that people think are necessary for the job and that

these differences in qualifications and skills, in turn, affected the

appeal of the various occupations. Masculine wording, for exam-

ple, may cue that different skills or training are required for the

job, and this assessment subsequently makes the job less appeal-

ing. This alternative account would suggest that the effects of

gendered wording on job appeal are not necessarily driven by

psychological variables (such as belongingness) that are ultimately

irrelevant to a job’s objective tasks, as we have proposed here, but

are instead due to logical assessments of whether one’s personal

skills match the job’s requirements. Thus, in Study 5 items assess-

ing whether people thought that they have the personal ability and

skills to perform each job (assuming they met the education and

experience requirements) were added, ensuring that anticipated

belongingness remains a significant contributor even when con-

trolling for perceived skill.

In Study 5 we assessed the effects of gendered wording on

gender diversity, belongingness, personal skills, and job appeal

using a between-subjects design, rather than the within-subjects

design used in Studies 3 and 4, and within a domain that does not

have strong preexisting norms about which gender has the best

skills for the job. Given our primary interest in how gendered

wording affects women’s perceptions of jobs and our focus on

whether gendered wording can affect women’s appraisals of jobs

in areas without strong preexisting gender stereotypes, we re-

cruited all female participants in the current study. Here female

participants read just one of two advertisements, for a real estate

agent, that was either masculinely or femininely worded. Next,

they responded to items assessing gender diversity, belongingness,

personal skill, and job appeal. The real estate agent advertisement

was an ideal context to test whether the effects of gendered

wording are strong enough to women’s appeal ratings of jobs even

in the absence of strong predetermined norms about who best

belongs or has the skills necessary for that job. We expected

women to rate the real estate job as less appealing when it was

masculinely than femininely worded, and for this effect to be

mediated by anticipated belongingness.

Method

One hundred and eighteen Canadian-born introductory psychol-

ogy students participated online in exchange for course credit.

Participants were all female (65% White, 15% Asian, 8% Indian,

and 12% other or not listed).

Each participant read one of two real estate agent advertise-

ments previously used in Studies 3 and 4. One version of the

advertisement used more feminine wording, and the other used

more masculine wording (see Appendix B). Participants then com-

pleted our dependent measures. First was the index of gender

diversity, which was the same two items used in Study 3: “How

many women . . .” (a) “work in this company?” and (b) “work in

the position being advertised?” on a Likert scale ranging from 0

(0% women)to10(100% women), each point labeled in 10%

increments, r(119) ⫽.44, p⬍.001. Next, participants were asked

three items assessing their personal skill for the job (“I could

perform well at this job”; “If I had this job I would definitely

succeed at it”; and “If I had this job there is a good chance I would

fail at it,” reverse coded; ␣⫽.81), belongingness (e.g., “I could fit

in well at this company”; ␣⫽.76), and job appeal (e.g., “This job

is appealing”; ␣⫽.85) on a Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly

disagree)to7(strongly agree). The anticipated belongingness and

job appeal items were identical to those used in Study 4, and

moderately correlated, r(119) ⫽.49, p⬍.001.

Results and Discussion

All the subsequent analyses used ANOVA with wording (fem-

inine vs. masculine) as a between-subjects factor. As expected,

women perceived fewer women within the masculinely than fem-

ininely worded real estate advertisements (M⫽4.27 [39%], SD ⫽

1.28 [12%] vs. M⫽5.27 [48%], SD ⫽1.31 [12%], respectively),

F(1, 117) ⫽17.83, p⬍.001, ␩

⫽.132. Critically, women rated

the real estate agent job as less appealing when it was masculinely

than femininely worded (M⫽3.86, SD ⫽1.22 vs. M⫽4.34,

SD ⫽1.07, respectively), F(1, 117) ⫽5.15, p⫽.03, ␩

⫽.042,

and reported less belongingness when it was masculinely than

femininely worded (M⫽3.71, SD ⫽1.04 vs. M⫽4.09, SD ⫽

0.89, respectively), F(1, 117) ⫽4.42, p⫽.04, ␩

⫽.036. Wording

of the advertisement did not affect women’s perceived level of

personal skill required for the job (M

masculine

⫽4.89, SD ⫽1.29;

feminine

⫽4.99, SD ⫽1.09; F⬍1).

10 GAUCHER, FRIESEN, AND KAY

To test whether feelings of anticipated belongingness mediated

the effect of gendered wording on job appeal, we again used

structural equation modeling (AMOS 16.0) and the procedures

outlined in Sadler et al. (in press), MacKinnon et al. (2004), and

Shrout and Bolger (2002). We tested the model shown in Figure 4:

the effect of wording on job appeal using anticipated belonging-

ness and perceived skill as simultaneous mediators (5,000 boot-

strapped samples). Controlling for perceived skill, advertisement

wording (dummy coded: feminine wording ⫽0, masculine word-

ing ⫽1) predicted anticipated belongingness (␤⫽⫺.19, p⫽.04),

so that women anticipated less belongingness within the jobs

advertised with masculine wording. This reduction in perceived

belongingness predicted less job appeal (␤⫽.67, p⬍.001). With

bias-corrected 95% CIs, the indirect effect of advertisement word-

ing on appeal via belongingness was significant (␤⫽⫺.13, 95%

CI [⫺.01, ⫺.24], p⫽.03). Again, women found masculinely

worded advertisements less appealing, at least in part, because of

the corresponding decrease in anticipated belongingness.

The perceived skill measure was associated with job appeal,

suggesting that it was an adequately reliable measure, but its

mediating effect was not significant. That is, women who reported

that they had the personal skill needed for a job did find it more

appealing, but their ratings of personal skill were not affected by

gendered wording. These results are consistent with the hypothesis

that gendered wording signals who belongs and who does not, and

this, in part, affects the appeal of a job, independent of whether one

perceives one has the personal skill to perform that job.

General Discussion

The results of these studies demonstrate that masculine wording

in job advertisements leads to less anticipated belongingness and

job interest among women, which, we propose, likely perpetuates

gender inequality in male-dominated fields. Study 1, a large-scale

naturalistic study, demonstrated that advertisements for male-

dominated jobs contained greater masculine wording than adver-

tisements for female-dominated jobs. Study 2 replicated this word-

ing effect in a different context: Advertisements posted within

faculties associated with male-dominated fields contained more

masculine wording than advertisements posted within faculties

associated with female-dominated fields. No difference in the

presence of feminine wording between male- and female-

dominated occupations emerge in either Study 1 or Study 2, and

we hypothesize such differences should have been found if social

role processes were driving the emergence of gendered wording.

Rather, the pattern of results across Studies 1 and 2 is more

supportive of a social dominance perspective, which predicts an

asymmetric pattern of wording differences.

Moreover, at the individual level, masculine wording affected

women’s appraisals of the job, suggesting that the wording differ-

ences found at an institutional level in Studies 1 and 2 have the

ability to affect individuals in a way that maintains gender inequal-

ity in numerous fields. In Studies 3–5 jobs advertised with mas-

culine wording were seen as less gender diverse, and women found

those jobs less appealing, compared with jobs advertised with

feminine wording. This effect occurred, at least in part, because

women anticipated less belongingness in the positions advertised

with the masculinely worded descriptions (Studies 4 and 5). Ad-

ditionally, Study 5 demonstrated that gendered wording did not

affect people’s appraisals of their personal ability to carry out a

job. The effects of gendered wording, therefore, seem to operate

via changes in how much one anticipates belonging in a job and

less via an appraisal of whether one has the skill for that job.

Generally, gendered wording had the largest effect on women.

Men were only slightly more likely to find the masculinely worded

jobs more appealing than femininely worded jobs, and there was

no effect of gendered wording on men’s feelings of belongingness

within the occupation. The type of job participants read about (i.e.,

engineer, real estate broker, nurse) did not interact with the ma-

nipulations. Regardless of the type of job, participants, particularly

women, ranked jobs most highly when they included words that

matched their gender. Furthermore, not a single participant in

postexperimental debriefings suggested that his or her responses

were influenced by the wording of the advertisements or the extent

to which advertisements included words that conformed to gender

stereotypes.

Implications for Social Psychological Theories of

Inequality and Sexism

This research documents the existence of a structural mecha-

nism that reflects and reaffirms gender inequality, manifesting

subtly through the language employed in job advertisements, and

thus offers unique empirical support for previous theory, most

notably SDT (Sidanius & Pratto 1999). Of all social psychological

intergroup theories, SDT articulates most comprehensively how

group-based hierarchy—such as gender-based division of la-

To further rule out differences in perceived skill as an alternative

explanation, we let a separate sample of 73 participants (36 women, 37

men) read all six advertisements. Participants assessed the training and skill

required for each job, independent of their own ability to perform that job

(four items; e.g., “How much skill do you think this job requires?”; alphas

ranged from .70 to .94). There was no effect of wording on skill ratings (all

ps⬎.22). Furthermore, after reading all six advertisements, participants

rated the appeal of each job using one item per job. The appeal effects

found in Studies 4 and 5 were replicated for female participants: We found

a significant Wording ⫻Gender interaction, F(1, 70) ⫽5.17, p⫽03,

␩

⫽.07. Women found femininely worded advertisements more appeal-

ing (M⫽4.31, SE ⫽0.19) than masculinely worded advertisements (M⫽

3.89, SE ⫽0.17), F(1, 35) ⫽4.53, p⫽.04. For men in this sample there

was no effect of wording, F(1, 35) ⫽1.01, p⫽.32.

Belongingness

-.19* .

Advertisement Wording Job Appeal

-.09

(-.21*)

Personal Skills

-.04 .15*

Personal

Skills

Figure 4. Standardized path estimates from Study 5 (all female partici-

pants). Advertisement wording coded as 1 ⫽masculine wording and 0 ⫽

feminine wording.

ⴱ

p⬍.05.

ⴱⴱ

p⬍.001.

GENDERED WORDING AND INEQUALITY

bor—is maintained through institutional discrimination. Past em-

pirical support for the theory has focused on how institutional

discrimination manifests within specific contexts—such as the

criminal justice system (Sidanius, Liu, Shaw, & Pratto, 1994),

government policy (Pratto, Stallworth, & Conway-Lanz, 1998),

and corporations (Pratto & Espinoza, 2001)—and through

individual-mediated practices, such as when individuals, acting on

behalf of the state, allow their biased beliefs to influence decisions

or actions they take. The current analysis expands on this past

work by documenting an institutional-level barrier that does not

solely rely on individual-mediated practices but is ingrained di-

rectly into recruitment practices that perpetuate gender divisions.

The current work also demonstrates that SDT-type effects can

operate via mechanisms of belongingness.

Such institutional procedures (i.e., the way that job advertise-

ments are written) likely have a discriminatory effect even if there

is no discriminatory intent. To be clear, it is unlikely that gendered

wording is deliberately infused in advertisements. Unlike in the

1960s when employers advertised specifically for men, today

many companies have explicit directives, and genuine goals, to

gender diversify their workplaces. Thus, it is likely that most, if not

all, gendered wording emerges through motivational biases that

operate outside people’s awareness. Regardless of whether gen-

dered wording deliberately ends up in advertisements, the natural-

istic data suggest that it is common in male-dominated fields, and

contributes to the division of traditional gender roles by dissuading

women’s interest in jobs that are masculine worded.

Our experimental data also suggest that replacing the masculine

wording with parallel feminine wording would increase women’s

interest in those jobs. The consequences of adding feminine word-

ing to real job advertisements, however, may not be so straight-

forward and direct. There is some evidence that “feminizing” job

descriptions may implicitly introduce requirements for warmth or

communion and increase discrimination against agentic women,

who are seen as insufficiently “nice” (Rudman & Glick, 1999).

Adding feminine wording to a job advertisement may attract more

female applicants, but what if those applicants are now evaluated

differently by the people making hiring decisions? It would be

unfortunate if a femininely worded job advertisement generated

more job interest from women generally, but then agentic female

applicants were subsequently less likely to be hired. These con-

siderations make it especially important to systematically and

thoroughly investigate the role of gendered wording in the recruit-

ment and hiring process before making strong policy recommen-

dations.

Although Studies 1 and 2 suggest that social dominance pro-

cesses underlie the emergence of masculine wording in advertise-

ments, both SRT and SDT are useful for explaining gendered

divisions of work more generally. Masculine wording is a barrier

that qualified women face when exploring career options. How-

ever, consistent with SRT, widely held gender stereotypes likely

contribute to the fact that women, on average, are less likely than

men to undertake initial training in highly male-dominated areas.

Focusing on the institutional-level factors contributing to gendered

divisions of work highlights a point of intervention: If stereotypes

arise, at least in part, because of broad differences in role divisions,

as SRT proposes, then changing women’s position in the social

structure may change the stereotype associated with women (see

Diekman & Eagly, 2000). A stereotype of greater female agency

could increase women’s training in currently male-dominated do-

mains. Thus, eliminating the use of incidental masculine wording

in job advertisements may not only increase the numbers of

women in these occupations but change the female stereotype to

include more agentic traits, leading to greater numbers of women

seeking training in these occupations.

Also noteworthy is the subtlety with which structural contribu-

tors to inequality are woven into the system. The mere presence of

masculine words such as challenge,lead,boast, and active in

advertisements made jobs appear less gender diverse (Study 3) and

less appealing to women (Studies 4 and 5), even though these

words composed a fraction of the total words in the advertise-

ments. This subtlety of gendered wording makes it a particularly

pernicious and potent contributor to inequality. Whereas gendered

pronouns and other explicit references to the gender of a candidate

can be detected by readers, gendered wording, in the way that we

have studied it here, is masked. Not one participant picked up on

gendered language when asked at the end of the studies what

aspects of the advertisements affected his or her opinion about the

job. Instead, participants generally attributed their decisions to

broad attitudes toward the types of careers being advertised. Al-

though these attitudes certainly played a role in their responses,

given that participants were randomly assigned to experimental

condition, wording manipulations also mattered. Consistently find-

ing certain jobs slightly more unappealing over time, without being

aware of the external reasons why, may actually cause some

women to believe that they are uninterested, for intrinsic reasons,

in particular types of jobs. This may ultimately lead them away

from occupations that they may otherwise have found more intrin-

sically interesting.

There are clear implications of the present work for sex dis-

crimination literatures. To date, many of the well-documented

barriers to women’s inclusion in traditionally masculine occupa-

tions have been studied primarily in evaluation and performance

contexts—and after women have already been hired. Such better

documented barriers include (a) exclusion from informal network-

ing opportunities necessary for promotion (Ibarra, 1992), (b) un-

welcoming or patronizing work environments (Dardenne, Dumont,

& Bollier, 2007; Vescio, Gervais, Snyder, & Hoover, 2005), (c)

double standards for promotion and hiring (Biernat & Kobrynow-

icz, 1997; Cuddy et al., 2004; Rudman, 1998; Rudman & Glick,

1999), (d) attributional rationalizations (Heilman & Haynes,

2005), and (e) underperformance due to stereotype threat (Bell,

Spencer, Iserman, & Logel, 2003; Davies & Spencer, 2005). The

current work complements this past work by identifying a subtle

institutional-level barrier operating at the initial recruitment phase.

The current work also comments on self-selection hypotheses

and explanations for women’s career choices. What may appear, at

least at first glance, as gender differences in self-selection of

occupations is actually influenced, at least in part, by systematic

factors outside the self. It is not only that women are socialized to

like occupations that are thought to require highly feminine traits,

such as nursing, though this is certainly part of the puzzle of

women’s underrepresentation. Additionally, as the current work

reveals, subtle cues outside the self are affecting the appeal of

various jobs for women. Women and men, for example, may

equally like and desire an engineering job, but highly masculine

wording used in the advertisement reduces women’s appeal of the

job because it cues that women do not belong. Highly masculine

12 GAUCHER, FRIESEN, AND KAY

wording may cause women to turn away from a job that they may

have otherwise liked because they suspect that they will not

belong, not because they do not think that they have the skills

necessary for the job. In this way, qualified applicants are opting

out of jobs that they could perform well. We speculate that

women’s reaction to highly masculine wording is likely functional

and adaptive. Forced to overcome barriers to advancement and

inclusion within male-dominated occupations, women in these

fields have likely learned that certain environments are more

hostile toward women than others. Being vigilant for cues altering

them to the possibility of future negative experiences is important

for future occupational success.

Limitations and Future Directions

Although the laboratory is a good place to magnify novel

phenomena, laboratory experiments can raise concerns about ex-

ternal validity. Indeed, the extent to which the stimulus materials

used in Studies 3–5 map onto the real-world findings of Studies 1

and 2 is an issue that is important for evaluating the magnitude of

the current work. Certainly the average presence of masculine and

feminine words in the controlled experimental materials was

higher than the average emerging in the real-world advertisements,

yet the written experimental advertisements used in Studies 3–5

were not completely out of bounds according to the real-world

advertisements. The created advertisements contained an average

of approximately 7%– 8% gendered language, whereas the real-

world advertisements contained an average of approximately 1%

gendered language. Examining the range of the real-world sample,

however, demonstrates that real-word advertisements can contain

up to 8% gendered language. Even though such advertisements

may be outliers in these samples, they do exist.

Also, strong manipulations containing a high presence of gen-

dered wording were necessary because experimental participants

had read only one or six advertisements. Actual job seekers typi-

cally read dozens, maybe hundreds, of advertisements. Thus the

“dose” of gendered language is comparable, whether it is received

as a strong bias across six advertisements or a less strong bias

across 50 advertisements. That said, future work should test the

boundary conditions of gendered wording effects and determine

the smallest amount of masculine wording necessary to affect

individual women. Furthermore, although the type of wording

found in male-dominated areas (many masculine words, few fem-

inine words) was replicated in Studies 3–5, the type of wording

found in female-dominated areas (moderate levels of both mascu-

line and feminine words) was not exactly represented in our

laboratory studies. In the current work we chose to focus on how

women react to the masculine wording typically found in male-

dominated fields, and whether they might find advertisements

more appealing if they were femininely worded, but future work

should investigate reactions to the more balanced wording typi-

cally found in female-dominated areas. Future research should also

identify the important features of masculine wording in determin-

ing job appeal (or other effects). For example, the location of

gendered wording within an advertisement may moderate its ef-

fect. Gendered wording within the company description (e.g., “We

are a dominant firm”) might affect global perceptions of the

company as a whole, whereas gendered wording within the de-

scription of job duties (e.g., “You will be a dominant sales force”)

might affect only perceptions of the job, not perceptions of the

company more globally. A limitation of the current studies is that

gendered wording was diffused throughout each advertisement and

not designed to test whether there might be different effects in

different parts of the job advertisement. Also, the current studies

did not examine precisely which words were most powerful in

driving gendered wording effects. It is likely that words most

strongly associated with the male stereotype will have the largest

effect than words more weakly associated with the male stereo-

type.

To understand why women continue to be underrepresented in

traditionally male-dominated fields, it is essential to understand

precisely how institutional-level factors, such as gendered word-

ing, affect the appeal of certain jobs. Understanding institutional-

level factors is also important if one wants to design initiatives or

interventions that will increase gender diversity, or diversity of all

types. There are certainly groups within other domains (such as

universities) that would like to diversify their membership. For

example, the wording of some recruitment materials, such as

university mission statements, may tacitly appeal to people of

different socioeconomic status.

Just as gendered wording is salient to men and women, wording

associated with individualism– collectivism may be salient to peo-

ple of high and low socioeconomic status. Individualism—the

degree to which an autonomous and unique self is valued over the

group—is most strongly a characteristic of the White, urban, upper

middle class (Oyserman & Marcus, 1998). As such, words asso-

ciated with individualism (such as individual and uniqueness) may

be more likely to emerge within the mission statements of high-

status or private universities, compared with the mission state-

ments of lower status or public universities. Just as highly mascu-

line wording makes women feel like they do not belong, highly

individualistic wording within the mission statements of private

universities may subtly cue that members of lower socioeconomic

status groups do not belong and discourage them from applying,

apart from other tangible reasons (e.g., tuition costs). Thus, our

focus on how language perpetuates existing group dominance has

theoretical significance for a host of other domains, not only for

gender and occupations. Future work would do well to explore

how language manifesting at the institutional-level inadvertently

serves to maintain existing social arrangements across a number of

domains.

Finally, there are a few limitations of the current work that are

worth noting. Students from a major Canadian university, although

from a broad range of academic majors, were participants in

Studies 3–5. Although in one sense university students are relevant

participants insofar as they do not currently have a job and are all

anticipating applying for one in the near future, one may wonder

whether the current findings would generalize to other demo-

graphic groups or to active job applicants. Active job applicants,

for instance, may be more highly committed, or motivated, to get

a job in a particular occupation. On the one hand, a high level of

motivation and commitment could make people more attentive to

wording cues, in an effort to find the perfect job. On the other

hand, strong motivation and commitment to a specific occupation

could cause people to apply indiscriminately to jobs in an attempt

to ensure that they get at least some job in the field, thus reducing

the strength of gendered wording on people’s appeal judgments.

GENDERED WORDING AND INEQUALITY

Elucidating such moderators of gendered wording effects is a

fruitful future direction.

It is also important to note the nature of our dependent variable.

Job appeal was assessed with a six-item measure, showing good

reliability across studies. This measure was reliable for both men

and women, and can be taken as face valid index of the extent to

which a job is appealing. Nonetheless, future work would do well

to include a true behavioral measure.

Conclusion

Social inequality and existing divisions of labor can be main-

tained and perpetuated in many ways. Individuals and groups hold

a range of ideologies, belief systems, and stereotypes that justify

the status quo (Jost & Hunyady, 2005; Napier, Mandisodza, An-

dersen, & Jost, 2006), but individuals need not always be the

driving force. Inequalities can also be reinforced via institutional-

level factors that influence individual judgments and preferences

in such ways that serve to preserve group inequality and the

prevailing status quo. Although these institutional-level features

may be less salient or seemingly direct than particular justifying or

hierarchy-enhancing ideologies, and are much less researched,

they are likely just as important in stagnating social change (Haley

& Sidanius, 2005). The current research highlights one such

institutional-level feature and demonstrates its potential impact on

judgments relevant to the maintenance of inequality. In doing so,

it provides useful advances for our understanding of gender in-

equality in the workforce. But beyond that, we hope it highlights

the power of looking to features of the social structure— especially

those that may easily go unnoticed—in helping social psycholo-

gists uncover the ways in which social inequality is created,

reinforced, and ultimately maintained.

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(Appendices follow)

16 GAUCHER, FRIESEN, AND KAY

Appendix A

List of Masculine and Feminine Words Coded in Studies 1 and 2

Masculine words Feminine words

Active Affectionate

Adventurous Childⴱ

AggressⴱCheerⴱ

AmbitioⴱCommitⴱ

AnalyⴱCommunal

AssertⴱCompassionⴱ

AthletⴱConnectⴱ

AutonomⴱConsiderate

BoastⴱCooperatⴱ

ChallengⴱDependⴱ

CompetⴱEmotionaⴱ

Confident Empathⴱ

CouragⴱFeminine

Decide Flatterable

Decisive Gentle

DecisionⴱHonest

DeterminⴱInterpersonal

Dominant Interdependenⴱ

DominaⴱInterpersonaⴱ

ForceⴱKind

Greedy Kinship

Headstrong Loyalⴱ

HierarchⴱModesty

HostilⴱNag

Implusive Nurturⴱ

IndependenⴱPleasantⴱ

IndividualⴱPolite

IntellectⴱQuietⴱ

LeadⴱResponⴱ

Logic Sensitivⴱ

Masculine Submissive

Objective Supportⴱ

Opinion Sympathⴱ

Outspoken Tenderⴱ

Persist Togetherⴱ

PrincipleⴱTrustⴱ

Reckless Understandⴱ

Stubborn Warmⴱ

Superior Whinⴱ

Self-confidenⴱYieldⴱ

Self-sufficienⴱ

Self-relianⴱ

Note. The asterisk denotes the acceptance of all letters, hyphens, or numbers following its appearance.

(Appendices continue)

GENDERED WORDING AND INEQUALITY

Appendix B

Job Advertisements Used in Studies 3–5

Feminine Masculine

Engineer

Company description Company description

• We are a community of engineers who have effective

relationships with many satisfied clients.

• We are a dominant engineering firm that boasts many

leading clients.

• We are committed to understanding the engineering

sector intimately.

• We are determined to stand apart from the

competition.

Qualifications Qualifications

• Proficient oral and written communication skills. • Strong communication and influencing skills.

• Collaborates well, in a team environment.

• Sensitive to clients’ needs, can develop warm client

relationships.

• Bachelor of Engineering degree or higher from

recognized university.

• Registered as a Professional Engineer.

• Ability to perform individually in a competitive

environment.

• Superior ability to satisfy customers and manage

company’s association with them.

• Bachelor of Engineering degree or higher from

recognized university.

• Registered as a Professional Engineer.

Responsibilities Responsibilities

• Provide general support to project teams in a manner

complimentary to the company.

• Direct project groups to manage project progress and

ensure accurate task control.

• Help clients with construction activities. • Determine compliance with client’s objectives.

• Create quality engineering designs. • Create quality engineering designs.

Plumber

Company description Company description

• We are a committed provider of dependable plumbing

solutions.

• We are determined company that delivers superior

plumbing.

• We have many loyal clients, and deliver honest,

personal service.

• We are proud of our success, and boast an impressive

record.

Qualifications Qualifications

• Dependable, with demonstrated commitment to client

service.

• Self-reliant, with demonstrated ability to perform

tasks independently.

• Can interpret blueprints and schematics. • Ability to analyze blueprints and schematics.

• Licensed/certified plumber from recognized

community college or related program.

• Licensed/certified plumber from recognized

community college or related program.

• Previous experience an asset. • Previous experience an asset.

Responsibilities Responsibilities

• Service our clients’ plumbing systems. • Maintain customers’ plumbing systems.

• Respond to plumbing problems and find innovative

repair solutions.

• Analyze problems logically and troubleshoot to

determine needed repairs.

• Collaborate on new building projects, providing

plumbing advice.

• Deliver plumbing expertise on new building projects.

Retail sales manager

Company description Company description

• Our hope is to be the best employer in clothing retail

by providing a pleasant and rewarding employment

experience.

• Our ambition is to be the best employer in clothing

retail by delivering a rewarding employment

experience.

• We nurture and support our employees, expecting that

they will become committed to their chosen career.

• We will challenge our employees to be proud of their

chosen career.

Qualifications Qualifications

• Full-time, flexible availability. • Full-time, variable availability.

• Cheerful, with excellent communication skills. • Strong communication skills.

• Capable of working with minimal supervision. • Ability to work independently.

(Appendices continue)

18 GAUCHER, FRIESEN, AND KAY

Appendix B (continued)

Feminine Masculine

Responsibilities Responsibilities

• Can motivate others to reach their potential as

employees.

• Can challenge others to reach their potential as

employees.

• You will be the head of our fast-paced store, with

further opportunities for career development.

• You will be the boss of our fast-paced store, with

further opportunities career advancement.

• You’ll develop interpersonal skills and understanding

of business.

• You’ll develop leadership skills and learn business

principles.

• Be a role model for your store, representing our

exclusive brand.

• Be a leader in your store, representing our exclusive

brand.

Real estate agent

Company description Company description

• Join our sales community! Even if you have no

previous experience, we will help nurture and develop

your sales talents.

• Take our sales challenge! Even if you have no

previous experience, we will facilitate the acquisition

of your sales abilities.

• We support our employees with an excellent

compensation package.

• We boast a competitive compensation package.

Qualifications Qualifications

• As the ideal candidate, you will have a pleasant

attitude, dependable judgment, and be attentive to

details.

• The superior candidate will have a self-confident

attitude, decisive judgment, and be detail-oriented.

• Excellent communicator. • Strong communicator.

• Bilingualism is an asset. • Bilingualism is an asset.

• Previous background in real estate an asset, but not

required.

• Previous background in real estate an asset, but not

required.

Responsibilities Responsibilities

• Connect with potential clients; being sensitive to their

needs, introduce them to properties.

• Recruit potential buyers; determine their interests and

lead them to properties.

• Serve as the connection between your client and each

property’s seller.

• Negotiate for your buyer with each property’s seller.

• Understand real estate markets to establish appropriate

selling prices for properties.

• Analyze real estate markets to determine appropriate

selling prices for properties.

Nurse

Company description Company description

• Our hospital serves a community of approximately

100,000 people.

• The hospital is located within a city of approximately

100,000 people.

• We are committed to provide top quality health care

that considers the best needs of our patients.

• We are determined to deliver superior medical

treatment tailored to each individual patient.

Qualifications Qualifications

• Demonstrated ability to respond appropriately

emergencies.

• Demonstrated ability to act decisively in emergencies.

• Principled and self-reliant professional with

dedication to the profession.

• Able to work shift work.

• Bachelor of Nursing from recognized university.

• Current license with College of Nurses in Ontario as

a Registered Nurse.

• Caring and compassionate professional with a passion

for the profession.

• Dependable and willing to work shift work.

• Bachelor of nursing from recognized university.

• Current license with College of Nurses in Ontario as a

Registered Nurse.

Responsibilities Responsibilities

• As part of a team, provide health care services to the

wide variety of community members who come for

care.

• In keeping with the hospital’s hierarchy, administer

medical interventions to the wide variety of

individuals who require treatment.

• Consider patient symptoms in order to select

appropriate treatment and support.

• Analyze patient symptoms to determine appropriate

interventions.

• Collaborate with other care providers, but also able to

work independently.

• Be self-reliant and able work independently, but also

able to work on a team.

(Appendices continue)

GENDERED WORDING AND INEQUALITY

Appendix B (continued)

Feminine Masculine

Administrative assistant

Company description Company description

• We are a corporate team dedicated to supporting our

financial clients.

• Our organization works to offer every possible

advantage to our banking customers.

• Our company is devoted to providing a great work/life

balance and compensation package.

• The company boasts impressive salaries, allowing our

employees with financial independence.

Qualifications Qualifications

• Experience in providing administrative support

services to a team of senior management and

understand office organization.

• Ability to deal with multiple senior staff in a

demanding environment and navigate office

hierarchy.

• Polite; sensitive to needs of other employees and

clients.

• Civil personality; aware of other workers’ and

customers’ requirements.

• Dependable and responsible. • Independent and self-reliant.

• Capable computer skills. • Strong computer skills.

Responsibilities Responsibilities

• Support office team and assist with departmental

procedures so that work progresses more efficiently.

• Organize and monitor office tasks and processes so

that work progresses more efficiently.

• Connect and develop relationships with a variety of

clients (e.g., other businesses).

• Able to interface with external parties (e.g., other

businesses).

• Coordinate incoming and outgoing shipments. • Control incoming and outgoing shipments.

Received March 31, 2010

Revision received October 13, 2010

Accepted October 15, 2010 䡲

20 GAUCHER, FRIESEN, AND KAY

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