It’s well known that not only are many jobs communicated and filled informally, but that this ratio is increasing year on year.  New research from Bocconi University suggests that often this communication is riddled with gender biases that provide female candidates with a less positive description of the vacant position, with this especially common if the decision-maker in question is conservative.

The researchers set out to explore the leadership gap between men and women and found that while overt discrimination may be less prevalent, biases remain that contribute towards a gap that the World Economic Forum suggests is still around 31%.

Subtly discouraged

The researchers conducted five distinct experiments to explore any possible gender bias in the communication that takes place in any pre-recruitment stage.  They also took particular notice of the political ideology of participants as a potential predictor of bias.  They did this because the status quo is very much that of it being a “man’s world”, and so conservatives may be more inclined to want to preserve that than liberals.

The volunteers were placed in a scenario whereby they had to recruit both a male and a female leader for a fictional company.  They were each given eight pieces of information about that firm, before being split into two groups.  One of these groups had to communicate with the female candidate, while the other communicated with the male candidate.

The Conservatives in the experiment who thought they were talking to the male candidate chose more positive pieces of information about the company to share, whereas when they thought they were speaking to the female candidate they chose the less positive spin.  Sadly, the same bias was shown when recruiters were asked to write an email describing the position.

“Given the statistics that 80% of jobs are communicated to people informally, and coupled with our finding that these communications may be riddled with gender bias, it is important for companies to rethink about how they communicate with candidates at that stage. One way to do that would be to make the process more formalized to allow for less gender bias and less human error,” the researchers conclude.