On the path to more gender equality and inclusion in the workplace with the Gender Bias Decoder
March 8th is International Women’s Day and this year’s theme is the power of solidarity between women and men. More than 100 years after the launch of the first International Women’s Day, continuing the global fight for more freedom and equality for women remains urgent. Official worldwide figures—including from the World Economic Forum—show that women continue to lag behind men in terms of pay, education and health. Violence against women also continues to be an important area of concern.
Work still to be done on the labour market
According to Mimouna Mahdaoui, Senior Manager DE&I Strategy at StepStone, the current labour shortage provides the ideal setting to finally move towards achieving more equality, diversity and inclusion in our companies. As she explains: “Today, companies in all sectors are feverishly looking for new talent. The number of vacancies is skyrocketing, but at the same time the supply of new workers is limited. At StepStone we are also noticing that existing gender role patterns are still too entrenched in many sectors. For example, we see an over-representation of women in sectors such as social services and health care, while manufacturing remains a male bastion. There is therefore an urgent need to step up efforts to give gender equality a boost.”
Mimouna cites an example to illustrate this: “Figures from the World Economic Forum on female representation on executive boards show Belgium achieving a score of 30.7 per cent by 2020. Not a figure to be proud of!”
Equal pay and social protection for M/F
In addition to open-mindedness in selection and recruitment processes, Mimouna says there are also major challenges in terms of better working conditions, remuneration and social protection for women. She cites some specific points of contention: “Examples include a reduction in the number of career years required for a full career, the inclusion of non-work periods, better-paid parental leave and time credit (for both women and men), as well as better allocation of thematic leave. The rise of new family structures—with more and more single-parent families—will put additional pressure on the achievement of these action points.”
The Gender Bias Decoder: tackling gender discrimination at the source
“In practice, gender discrimination in selection procedures remains a persistent problem. Why is this? The root cause often lies in what are known as gender-biased job ads, or ads in which certain keywords subtly skew male or female,” says Mimouna. “In a recent British study by Totaljobs (2020-2021), the Gender Bias Decoder was used to analyse 1,000,000 job advertisements and over 2 million gender-related terms. What did the study show? There is still a long way to go towards gender-neutral language use, as terms are used unconsciously across many sectors and at many job levels. Men continue to be over-represented predominantly in sectors such as science, automotive and banking/insurance, while women find their way mainly into education, healthcare and public services.”
An uncomfortable truth exposed
According to Mimouna, the Gender Bias Decoder—which is now being further developed and promoted by StepStone—shines the spotlight on an uncomfortable truth. “The unconscious use of gender-related terms reinforces traditional gender role patterns on the labour market and prevents candidates from developing as professionals, beyond previous limitations. For example, we see that male-biased job ads often emphasise terms related to active leadership, autonomous work and hierarchically related challenges, while female-oriented job ads tend to focus on softer job qualities and have a warm and caring undertone. Our own research also pointed out that job vacancies include the term ‘maternity leave’ twice as often as the neutral term ‘parental leave’.”
According to Mimouna, it is therefore not surprising that such an approach continues to produce predictable recruiting results. “Together with committed employers and recruiters, we can reverse these trends. Our Gender Bias Decoder will definitely make a valuable contribution!”
Get started with the Gender Bias Decoder
Would you like to use the Gender Bias Decoder to thoroughly screen and gender-neutralise your job ads yourself? Get started now! StepStone is offering you this tool for free. Among its interesting features is a database of neutral synonyms for gender-biased words. Please note: this tool is currently only available in English.
#FemalePowerInRecruiting
Intrigued about how you can attract more female talent to your company? Use #femalepower to unlock the full potential of the labour market and go for maximum diversity and inclusion!
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More information is available at https://www.stepstone.be/voor-werkgevers/evenement/femalepowerinrecruiting/
