Women Using Less Feminine Terms in Cover Letters Are Less Likely to Get Hired
journals.aom.org
journals.aom.org
The paragraph in the article where they describe how minorities get more calls when they "whiten" their resume has me wonder if this theory couldn't be simplified.
What I mean by this is that when you try to join a company where the culture is geared towards white men in their twenties, you have to fit that culture. I'd also argue that they would find the same results for age if they looked for it.
On the contrary, the study says the opposite (for women). If there is a cover letter by a fictive person, which appears to be a woman, which is trying "to fit in to that culture" by using more assertive terms, it will result in less callbacks. For fictive men, it is the reverse.
As the person is fictive, the actual supposed qualities of that person are irrelevant.
What I meant by this is that you have to "fit" that culture and that by not "being" part of it you won't get hired even if you're trying your best.
Nevertheless I think it's clear the onus needs to be on employers to try to identify and remediate biases in their hiring practices.
That being said, as a woman, that's a company I'd skip instead of lying my way in and then hating my daily life.
I've worked in a company with such a culture before and hated my years there. I thought my presence would change things - it didn't.
Like you, I can see how some of those words could be more or less assertive, but I'd go as far as to argue that anyone connecting gender with assertiveness is outright sexist. :)
Being less assertive is considered a feminine quality. Being too assertive earns someone a label of "difficult to work with" "bossy" or cruder, "bitchy".
That's the core of the problem isn't it? The source of gender discrimination and racial discrimination and religious discrimination and age discrimination is that there are a whole lot of teams at a whole lot of tech companies that are white men int their 20s, and have no interest in hiring anyone who isn't a while man in their 20s.
It's the reason 'culture' should be entirely removed from any sort of interview criteria - more specifically, interviewers should be warned that measuring a candidate based on 'culture' is an open door to discrimination.
More broadly. it's something that needs to be pointed out whenever discussions drag out about "why aren't there more of <X>?" and "Why do <X> make less?" It's because our entire industry does it's best to keep <X> out. It's not brain chemicals, it's not negative role models, it's not any other excuse that likes to get thrown up. It's deliberate, at least as deliberate as it can be.
The Australian public service tried this a couple of years back. It too backfired.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tri...
Also, there's this fragment: "Last year, the Australia Bureau of Statistics doubled its proportion of female bosses by using blind recruitment. Professor Hiscox said he discussed the trial with the ABS and did not consider it a rigorous or randomised control trial." Isn't it too harsh? Does that mean all of the real-world case studies should go to the bin because the organizations didn't have randomized control trials at every step of their operations?
Look at experience. Look at skills. Do they fit the position.
If yes, interview. If no, do not interview.
The fluff around everything else is just fluff.
I guess it depends a lot on the industry. Most of the cover letters I've seen when hiring are following a template or pattern gleaned from a website or book telling you how to write a cover letter.
Also, you're never 100% sure that a job seeker didn't get someone to help them write the cover letter or if it's copypasta.
Admittedly, if I was looking for a job, I'd provide a cover letter just to satisfy arbitrary expectations, but I hate writing them. All I do these days is regurgitate the list of the advertised requirements and for each item, indicate if I meet, have comparables or don't meet it. It beats having to come up with a bunch of made up platitudes about why they should hire me.
In the same vein as cover letters though, I don't put much weight on post-interview thank-you letters.
And yes, I couldn't care less if the candidate gave a post-interview thank you. That's not going to influence my decision.
I've at least read the cover letters of those I'm about to interview, feels rude not to.
Why brag about ignoring a valuable indicator that applicants spend considerable time writing?
We do use the hiring letter, because the ability to write is important to us, but I understand why it might not be considered.
Even if you want to test communication skills, cover letter is completely unlike normal on the job communication for most of us. Cover letter shows how great you are at selling yourself. Technical person communication skills are more about clarity, ability to express complicated ideas, ability to simplify complex things for management, negotiation about deadlines etc.
It also tells me if they really did any research into their prospective employer. Especially useful when they forget to swap employers and accidentally leave in the name of another place they're applying to.
However, I pretty much never read thank you/follow-up emails after an interview and don't care if candidates send them or not.
See also: attaching pictures, "hobbies" section and other irrelevant personal details.
The point, which I'm very far from the first person to bring up, is that the actual purpose of vague concepts like "culture fit" is to be a wildcard you can use to exclude anyone without having to critically examine or provide an actual reason. How you personally justify having pink hair not being a "culture fit" to yourself doesn't change anything about that. What it does change however is that you now no longer have to explain that you're not hiring someone for their hair color.
There's no need to invent hypotheticals, by the way. The people I've heard asking how they can stop getting denied for "culture fit" in interviews have one thing in common and it's being >40 years old or a woman.
In my view, hiring manager that ignore cover letters usually also have very strong go/no-go criteria like “We won't hire anyone who doesn't have prior Java experience”, etc.
[As a candidate, I like filtering out such employers; so I'm wondering if I should play with including some kind of tracking link in my cover letter that would track if the employer had clicked on it; and filter out employers that didn't.]
Same, don’t look at blogs or Github either.
The CV/resume is the “sales brochure” to get a phone interview, I don’t look at that either once the candidate advances to in-person.
How gendered language was measured:
> We used a computerized text analysis tool, Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC; Pennebaker, Booth, & Francis, 2007) to compute a measure of gendered language for each job application material (Gaucher et al., 2011).
How women self-reported downplaying their gender:
> Job seekers downplayed gender incongruence by: removing gender-incongruent hobbies or extracurriculars; describing themselves with less gender-incongruent language; altering their name; or removing gender-incongruent job experiences.
The big takeaway from the study is that the language used impact success rate for women but does not have any effect for men, which makes the conclusion a bit odd. If women are punished for violating normative gender expectations, why are not men who use feminine terms punished? Gender norms are generally enforced for both women and men (as is often reported by transgender people). The article does not seem to put much thought on that question.
It seems we might infer that "likeability" is considered important in "hireability" for women but not men. What I like is that there should be other ways to test this hypothesis that don't involve cover letters.
What makes these words m/f? Is it studies of how people perceive them? If that’s the case the authors seem to be missing the picture. In an equal world these words are gender neutral. And personally I don’t view them as having that division, but I guess others do and that seems to be the real issue.
I suspect the authors chose masc/fem to describe the words because that makes for a more click-baity headline for the paper. Not so that it would peg the irony meter of people who notice that they are using gender stereotypes to characterize words in a paper ostensibly written to help reduce sexism.
Instead of trying to fix the "problem" they've identified, why not take the study further to see if there exists any correlation between use of feminine language in the cover letters (for men and women) and career outcomes (educational outcomes for the MBA students)?
I don’t understand this whole gender stereotype. It seems misplaced when one gender tries to portray themselves as different than who they are.
I can believe they somehow measured that "men are less likely to cover" (by some measure), but how do they know the reason is that they are "less likely to anticipate discrimination"?
I think it is a huge problem with such papers that they mix data with their personal beliefs and interpretation. It seems to be typical for feminist papers. They collect some data, then, in the summary, they claim "the reason we see this data is because of ongoing discrimination". Many people seem unable to distinguish the different parts of such papers or "studies".
There is one part to assert authority, "see we are doing the science thing", and then they use that to push their agendas.
I think since the media has destroyed its authority completely, this is the next frontier of politics to watch out for. We had to learn not to trust journalists, now we have to learn not to trust scientists. (Everybody can claim to be a scientist).
I don't want an aggressive, confident, challenging, outspoken and strong coworker. I want a team player.
Most regular jobs are just about building, "moving fast and breaking things" in a competitive environment. This is usually deemed "masculine" so no wonder using "feminine" terms is less rewarded.
Maybe the problem is that too many people think that women (including women themselves) cant be as "competitive" or "masculine" or whatever the term than men. There are plenty of examples in real life that show the contrary.
The article says the opposite?
I suppose we should really look at recruiters in tech and see if using one gets better results.
This set of characteristics has evolved over millions of years, beginning before humans had even branched off the evolutionary tree.
> In a study of 34 rhesus monkeys, for example, males strongly preferred toys with wheels over plush toys, whereas females found plush toys likable. It would be tough to argue that the monkeys’ parents bought them sex-typed toys or that simian society encourages its male offspring to play more with trucks.
I'd urge anyone who's questioning this to read the overview of the science from Stanford's School of Medicine: https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how-mens-and-womens-...
But then you have to zoom out a little bit and ask why you see so few men become stay at home fathers or househusbands compared to women and is the explanation a problem? Why don't men feel like they can be homemakers or take on the primary caregiver role for their kids? Why do so many women take on those roles? If the answer is really always voluntary preference then maybe it's not an issue but that's unfortunately not the case and the pressure and judgement imparted by society for people to conform to their "roles" creates this dynamic and is bad for everyone.
- women on average prefer to work with people and men - with things. Working with things scales well (like IT), working with people - doesnt scale well (nurse, teacher, doctor).
* Mothers are paid significantly less on average but fathers aren't and there are deep cultural dynamics that perpetuate this. There isn't a fundamental reason this should be the case.
* Women (and men obviously too but we're talking about women) are conditioned constantly from birth to have those preferences and have to deal with pressure from everyone in their lives to not deviate from what's expected from them. (Same with men too -- try being a manly man who wants to bake wedding cakes or go into fashion.) And then when women try to be mold breakers and go into "masculine fields" they're pushed away and become lower status.
Re the 2nd - I can come up with an argument supporting my theory that it is not only a social construct as you imply, but I will invite you first to prove your theory that this is ONLY a social conditioning of a woman that makes her make these choices, and there is no biology involved into that (Or very little).
To shade a shadow on your theory (as i assume this is a social construct theory) i recall some info that female orangutans were more interested in dolls and males - in more male toys similar to humans.
Also, in Scandinavian countries that ran out their way to make their societies egalitarian, even more women were choosing "traditional female" jobs than what the "social constructionists" were trying to achieve by their "gender equality" agenda.
But i will not argue about all of this as it is all well known and documented and people just need to make a 3h research on the internet.
Women as a class of people make around 30% less than men. If you don't think this is surprising you should. There's nothing inherent to men and women that would lead you to predict this. And, in fact, looking at the data you might actually expect that women as as class would make more than men because women have higher college graduation rates, and "go further" in higher education on average.
All of the things that "explain" the gap are literally the problems. Just because we have strong evidence that we know what some of the factors that lead to the gap are doesn't mean you throw up your hands and say, "that's just how men and women are I guess."
Isn't this also a problem? There's nothing inherent to men and women that would lead you to predict this.
My point is that this imbalance with wages is that much more surprising because of this other imbalance that seems like it would favor women in skilled fields.
Correlation is not causation.
Maybe men are more likely to pursue stressful, higher paying jobs because of social pressure to be breadwinners.
Not many women want to marry a house-husband.
Note that this study was done only after women complained about being paid less.
There are no simple answers as "hey, when we control for x, y, z the wage gap disappears", as these are almost inscrutably complex systems.
But to the topic, this "propaganda" often feels misdirected in its ambition to lessen gender differences as in penalties on job markets and other forms of discrepancies while continuing to separate men and women as if they were complete distinct creatures.
The strategy seems strangely analogous to rubbing that mosquito bite in hope it will stop itching.
For example, a person with a black sounding name will, on average, will face more difficulty in getting a job compared to a person with a white sounding name, all else equal. It is not particularly productive to say 'if we treated everyone the same they wouldn't have this issue'.
I think your ad hominem attack is a bit unjustified. You can disagree with the research without suggesting the author is incapable of making a cogent argument.
e.g. Brian Wansink's citation count is 33,969 and h-index is 85 [0]. Over a dozen of his papers were retracted after finding statistical anomalies:
"These problems included conclusions not supported by the data presented, data and figures duplicated across papers, questionable data including impossible values, incorrect and inappropriate statistical analyses, and "p-hacking". As of 2020 Wansink has had 18 of his research papers retracted (one twice), seven others have received an expression of concern, and 15 others have been corrected. On September 20, 2018, Cornell determined that Wansink had committed scientific misconduct and removed him from research and teaching activities; he resigned effective June 30, 2019."
[0] https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ME4wxCUAAAAJ&hl=en...
I do accept that the majority of the pay gap between men and women are attributable to factors within the control of employees. Choices about having children and taking career breaks, willingness to work long hours, unwillingness to take dangerous jobs. These are all reasons why in general a lot of women earn less than a lot of men.
This article isn't making general claims though. It's evaluating specific indicators of bias in specific circumstances, and on the face of it seems to have a compelling case. It does seem wrong that women using assertive terms should suffer a lower likelihood of getting an interview or role than men that use the same language.
The fact is that in some sectors for some roles there is good evidence of bias in selection. This is bad for applicants and bad for employers who are missing out on good candidates. The fact that some other industries may even have a pro-female bias doesn't excuse anything either. I can accept that and want to do something about it, while still being a Jordan Peterson fan and without being a neo-Marxist social justice warrior.
so, feminine in this case refers to Bakhtin & 'feminine dialogic'?
"If you ignore the premise, the conclusion makes no sense. Therefore the premise is flawed."
Except there's a great deal of cultural, historical and linguistic evidence that assertive language is considered more masculine, and communal language is considered more feminine. There would be no such evidence supporting a cultural bias considering high speech volume as "Hispanic language" that I'm aware of.
It shouldn't be controversial to claim that, traditionally, "masculine" as an ideal is defined in terms of assertiveness, dominance and hierarchy (particularly in business) whereas "feminine" as an ideal is typically defined in terms of empathy, submissiveness and collaboration. While English is not an explicitly gendered language like Spanish or German, the ways that masculinity and femininity are expected to be expressed within Anglophone cultures inform the way language is used as expression within those norms[0,3].
You are correct that this is stereotypical, as most gender conventions are, but incorrect in asserting that this stereotype does not exist beyond the authors' personal bias, and therefore, is useless in studying gender dynamics. Indeed, the entire point of the linked article is to study the effects of that bias and those stereotypes on the hiring process. Seeking to ignore that aspect on the basis that referring to stereotypes is itself engaging in stereotyping would miss the point in the same way as ignoring race in a study of early American slavery on the basis that focusing on race would be racist.
Women are Warmer but No Less Assertive than Men: Gender and Language on Facebook[0]
[0]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4881750/
Gender Differences in Communication Behaviors, Spatial Proximity Patterns, and Mobility Habits[1]
[1]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305616148_Gender_Di...
What Is Feminine Style Rhetoric and Why Is It Important?[2]
[2]https://jenniferspoelma.com/blog-feed/feminine-style-rhetori...
Masculine-Feminine Difference: How We Talk[3]
[3]https://www.huffpost.com/entry/masculinefeminine-differe_b_5...
This kind of bias is predictable, so there's no excuse for allowing it to have any affect over your hiring process. The people making hiring decisions either need to be trained in such a way that minimizes unfair or unlawful biases influencing their decisions, or they need to be given the bare minimum information as to avoid even having extra information that would influence their decision.