
Why some job adverts put women off applying - blowski
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44399028
======
1ba9115454
_She says Textio taught her company to avoid terms such as "coding ninja" \- a
common phrase in Silicon Valley job ads._

This would also put me off applying for the role. It makes the company sound
immature and anyone who calls themselves a coding ninja may not have great
self assesment skills.

~~~
paidleaf
Saying it was "common" is simply a lie. I would love to see her stats because
I've been working in tech for a while now and I've never seen the term "coding
ninja" in a job ad.

I've seen ludicrous demands like more experience in a tech than the tech has
been out.

Like "must haves : " \- 5 years experience in visual studio 2017 and sql
server 2017. Non negotiable.

~~~
Latty
I don't think it's a lie, I think it's just an old example. Just as the media
loves using "epic fail" in a "How do you do, fellow kids?" kind of way, it's
easy to assume something is still happening because it was big the last time
you checked.

------
r-a-w
I would like to see the scientific evidence of this unconscious bias they are
referring to. Im also skeptical of the claims that gender diversity alone will
boost revenue 41%. That is a extremely bold claim.

~~~
commandlinefan
I keep reading that tech is not very female-inclusive, and I keep wondering
where these people are looking. Maybe San Francisco is different than any of
the places I've worked in the past 25 years? I've been all over: deep south,
midwest, north texas - I don't know if the gender ratio was 50/50 since I
never did a headcount, but I sure remember an awful lot of women in technical
roles everywhere I've ever worked. Maybe they're not counting Indian women?

~~~
scarface74
Technical roles yes. How many are developers? I’m not dismissing QA, but QA
I’ve found is so much more female than male that in a group of developers, the
female will be asked are they QA.

------
SmellyGeekBoy
As a UK license payer and general supporter of the BBC, these thinly-veiled
advertising pieces (in this case for "Textio") always leave a bad taste in my
mouth. Latching on to a worthy cause like feminism just makes it worse.

------
fimdomeio
Replacing uncounscious bias, with conscious bias based on words that take into
account both the employer and the canditate prejudices towards some words is a
crazy tricky line of thought. To me it seems there's a problem, let's add an
aditional layer of complexity to make it more intentional and less visible.
The end result is that adverts get even more filled with prejudice.

~~~
commandlinefan
Yeah, that's what always makes me uncomfortable about diversity efforts.
Diversity? Sure, that sounds good. How you propose to get there? Ummm... not
so sure about that. If you go back to the origin of the term "white privilege"
as coined by Peggy McIntosh (in 1989, mind you, not 1972), you'll find that
she defends to concept with such dubious claims as "being able to find music
that represents your group" is a concrete example of "white privilege". Almost
all of her examples are essentially unverifiable - yet, the solution (to white
or male privilege) is always to replace intangible, nebulous advantages with
very specific, concrete disadvantages.

~~~
scarface74
You start working at diversity by recruiting from places like historically
black colleges for minorities and women only colleges for women(?).

------
paulus_magnus2
actually if they look closely enough they'll find out companies really want to
hire clever workaholics who have modest salary requirements, never ask for
raise or promotion and are easily taken advantage of. That's the perfect
employee.

The only way around this is to create more demand for labour. Make employers
compete more, break down monopolies, remove protections, moats, tax entrenched
rent seeking.

------
insertnickname
_A job description that uses the phrase "We're looking for someone to manage a
team" may seem innocuous enough.

But research has shown that the word "manage" encourages more men than women
to apply for the role.

Changing the word to "develop" would make it more female-friendly, says Kieran
Snyder_

So all you have to do to attract more women to a job is to lie about what the
job entails? Maybe jobs for managers put off women because they don't want to
be managers.

------
unwind
It's somehow funny to me that they refer to Textio's CEO as "Mr Snyder", when
she at least according to the company's Team page[1] seems to self-identify as
female. Amazing what a one-letter typo can do.

[1]: [https://textio.com/team/](https://textio.com/team/)

------
dfdffsdfff
"ads with lengthy bullet points detailing the role's responsibilities will
face a drop-off in women applying for the job"

Maybe women just don't like too much responsibility or hard work? Maybe for
that matter, no one does? Have they even checked what effect their proposed
changes have on male applicants? For example "coding ninja" would surely also
be off putting to many men.

~~~
doubletgl
Wasn't there a study concluding that women tend to under-estimate their skills
and men the opposite? If we assume that to be true, a long list of
responsibilities is more likely to put off women because they don't think they
can cover everything (or enough of it).

~~~
dfdffsdfff
There are all sorts of feminist studies. I bet most of them will be found to
be flawed and unsubstantiated - like many of sociology studies have been found
in recent times.

In any case, I don't think there is a law of nature or a biological force that
makes women underestimate their skills. Plenty of women don't underestimate
their skills.

~~~
vertex-four
Nobody suggested there’s a force of nature or biology behind women
underestimating their skills, only you - have you considered that many women
may be socialised to do so?

It’s not like the job application/interview/etc dance is perfectly neutral
towards every characteristic and background a person might have all the time
as it is - words used, interview styles, and so on and so forth are never
neutral.

~~~
dfdffsdfff
"Being socialized" would be a force of nature. Anyway, they are not - who
would do that, and why? The mostly female teachers? And somehow girls would
still do better than boys in school, despite constantly being told they are
bad? Actually the opposite is the case - studies have shown that boys tend to
get worse grades than girls for the same level of performance. So wouldn't
that be socialization of underestimating their skills for boys? (Of course
those studies might also be flawed, like the feminist ones).

~~~
vertex-four
Being socialised is not a force of nature, because that implies that it’s non-
changeable. It’s a societal choice to prioritise certain things and
deprioritise others, to raise our kids to believe certain things, to allow the
use of marketing in ways that reinforce existing beliefs, and so on and so
forth. I find it weird that you consider “women” to be a homogenous group who
all want the same thing and agree on exactly the method of achieving it, btw,
as implied by your suggestion that a female teacher would never do anything
that might hurt a girl’s sense of self worth.

I don’t know why studies suggest that boys are often better at correctly
estimating (or maybe overestimating?) their skill level, but there’s lots of
potential reasons aside from “biology” and “bad study”. Perhaps boys are just
told “fake it til you make it” more often, and do so. Perhaps girls focus more
on grades than boys in school for whatever reason, and the grading system is
just set up to demoralise people in general. There’s a hundred thousand
possible explanations - but they’re irrelevant to the point being made that if
this is happening, then in order to encourage people who already believe these
things about themselves to apply for a job, thinking about how to change your
job posting to fit people with those beliefs is a good idea.

~~~
dfdffsdfff
Um, it is you who refers to women as a homogeneous group that underestimates
their skills.

It is fine to try to attract more people to your job, if that is what you
want. However, if the problem is "women underestimate their skills", perhaps
it would be better to work on women having higher estimates of their skills,
than on downscaling the demands of jobs.

Women are free to go to career counseling and learn to correctly estimate
their skills. Like everybody else. Bookshops are full of books with career
counseling, too. I bet you can even get free advice on the internet. If you
want to, you can learn to succeed, even as a woman.

The whole discussion is moot. You are free to believe that women tend to
underestimate their skills, and men tend to overestimate. It just happens to
neatly align with feminist theory that men are worthless windbags, but if that
is your world view, ok.

If you are looking for papers, you can find plenty that contradict your
theory. For example today I saw another big study showing "Stereotype Threat"
has no effect on girl's performance on Maths. So even if girls are told they
are bad in Maths (which I doubt is happening on significant scale, but
whatever), at the very least it doesn't affect their performance.

------
vixen99
Ofcom (i.e., UK government-approved regulatory and competition authority for
the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United
Kingdom) mandates that for the BBC: 50% of leadership roles to be held by
women by 2020.

[http://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/10/13/ofcom-sets-new-
ground...](http://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/10/13/ofcom-sets-new-ground-rules-
bbc-50-leadership-roles-be-held-women-2020)

With an infinite supply of talent and availability this will work. But the
world isn't quite like that. Lots of women don't aspire to work 80 hours a
week at full capacity over and above other life choices. Moreover, will gender
trump merit on occasion? Who can doubt it?

~~~
gumby
your implicit assumption is that many men do "aspire to work 80 hours a week
at full capacity over and above other life choices". I think that's a big
assumption.

