

Wanted: gender-free job ads - XH
http://www.futurity.org/top-stories/wanted-gender-free-job-ads/

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orangecat
I agree with the general point, but it demonstrates a contradiction in "PC"
gender theory. On the one hand, men and women are statistically
psychologically identical, so any differences in career choices or outcomes
must be due to deliberate or unconscious discrimination. On the other hand,
you shouldn't use competitive terms in job ads because they're psychologically
unappealing to women.

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msbarnett
I think contemporary gender theorists would be very surprised to hear that
they think the way our society constructs gender produces identical
psychological proclivities.

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freshhawk
Sure, the actual experts would be.

I think the parent is referring to the current social norms of what you are
allowed/not allowed to say.

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orangecat
Yes, exactly.

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sp332
A simple writing exercise has been shown to close various stereotypical
"gaps", including gender and race:
[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/11/2...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/11/25/15-minute-
writing-exercise-closes-the-gender-gap-in-university-level-physics/) Maybe it
would be effective here too? "Perhaps you care about creativity, family
relationships, your career, or having a sense of humour. Pick two or three of
these values and write a few sentences about why they are important to you.
You have fifteen minutes." Then read the job ads.

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petercooper
An interesting observation. Obvious but not, at the same time :-) On the flip
side, this is an interesting way to discriminate in your hiring practices
without being explicit about it. I wonder to what extent you could take it.

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dmm
Gender is social construct. Sex is a biological one. Sex is a protected class.
Gender is not.

Why should we have gender-free job ads any more than we should have ads free
of any other quality?

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sp332
_researchers believe it’s likely that companies unintentionally place gendered
job advertisements.

“Many companies want to diversify,” Gaucher says. “Companies that use highly
masculine wording may, in reality, be just as welcoming to their female
employees as they are to their male employees.”_

This isn't about protecting gender, it's about unintentionally stomping on it.
If you're accidentally alienating half of the population, you're going to miss
out on a lot of good attributes of that gender. Some examples from the
article: "competitive" and "dominant" (male) versus "compassionate" and
"nurturing" (female). And how likely would it be for a male-gendered person to
make the videos in this article: [http://arstechnica.com/ask-ars/2011/04/how-
to-build-your-own...](http://arstechnica.com/ask-ars/2011/04/how-to-build-
your-own-computer-ask-ars-diy-series-part-i.ars)

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jerf
Who says it's an accident? Are we looking for competitive, dominant nurses and
compassionate, caring enterprise sales staff?

"Job ads should be gender neutral" is an awfully large thing to take as an
unexamined axiom. Should they really? Or should they reflect the desired
position? And if the latter, if someone writes a bad job position that scares
off some good applicants, does it really matter on what dimension they are
scaring off good applicants? Regardless of how they're scaring them off,
they're hurting themselves quite directly far more than the diffuse effect on
the applicant pool.

It just seems like the more you drill down into this and actually think, the
less interesting this becomes.

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sp332
_Regardless of how they're scaring them off, they're hurting themselves quite
directly far more than the diffuse effect on the applicant pool._

Definitely true.

 _Are we looking for competitive, dominant nurses and compassionate, caring
enterprise sales staff?_

The range of problems you can solve increases exponentially with the different
types of people you have on the team. The types you mention would be a good
addition to a team with complementary attributes.

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bullseye
It seems like it would be just as, or more, effective to run two different
type of ads rather than attempt "gender-free" descriptions.

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mmatants
It seems that both sides - employers and job applicants - have to reduce their
biases... Which the article suggests.

