Agency and communion in job advertisements: A replication study
Abstract
Purpose: Past research on language has found — in correspondence with gender stereotypes — that advertisements for male-dominated jobs, such as engineer or computer programmer, use more agentic wording than those for female-dominated jobs, such as registered nurse or administrative assistant (Gaucher, Friesen, & Kay, 2011). This pre-dominance of either agentic or communal wording in ads might contribute to the traditional gender division of labor, as it reduces women’s and men’s interest to apply for a job dominated by the other sex. Therefore, it is important to monitor whether the wording in real-world job advertisements still differs between male-and female-dominated jobs which is the aim of the present research. Methodology: Following, the methodology developed by Gaucher and her colleagues (2011), we used current (2017 vs. 2008) and more comprehensive dataset (N = 480,596 vs. N = 456) of real-world job advertisements, and a computerized algorithm, instead of manual coding, to analyze the data. Results: Male-dominated jobs are still advertised using more agentic words than female-dominated jobs. Whereas Gaucher et al. did not find a difference in communal wording, we found that female-dominated jobs consisted of more communal wording than male-dominated jobs. Limitations: The study is observational in its nature and its results only suggest that gendered wording in real job advertisements exists. Practical implications: The results are discussed in reference to the persistence of the gender status quo. Originality/Value: To our knowledge, the research is the first to use a large sample of real job advertisements to monitor gendered wording.
