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Towards gender-inclusive job postings: A data-driven comparison of augmented writing technologies
Job advertisements are often worded in ways that might pose discrimination risks leading to the exclusion of certain groups of applicants, particularly in relation to their gender. Especially in male-dominated professions or leadership roles, the specific linguistic formulation of job postings acqui...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9462703/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36084069 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274312 |
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author | Mihaljević, Helena Müller, Ivana Dill, Katja Yollu-Tok, Aysel |
author_facet | Mihaljević, Helena Müller, Ivana Dill, Katja Yollu-Tok, Aysel |
author_sort | Mihaljević, Helena |
collection | PubMed |
description | Job advertisements are often worded in ways that might pose discrimination risks leading to the exclusion of certain groups of applicants, particularly in relation to their gender. Especially in male-dominated professions or leadership roles, the specific linguistic formulation of job postings acquires relevance if more women are to be attracted to apply. Various technologies have emerged that offer automated text screening, some of them even suggesting alternative formulations to increase gender inclusivity. In this study we analyze four software providers on the German market using a corpus of ∼160, 000 job ads from three different platforms. We identify the relevant social psychological research on gender and language that is at the scientific core of these technologies. We show that, despite sharing a common foundation, the four tools assess the potential for exclusion in job postings in a considerably divergent way on multiple levels of comparison. We discuss the levers in the software pipeline of all four technologies, as well as the potential effect of certain implementation decisions, such as string-based vs. semantic approaches to computational processing of natural language. We argue that the ‘technological translation’ of research is extremely involved and further studies of its use in practice are needed to assess the potential for more gender equality. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9462703 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-94627032022-09-10 Towards gender-inclusive job postings: A data-driven comparison of augmented writing technologies Mihaljević, Helena Müller, Ivana Dill, Katja Yollu-Tok, Aysel PLoS One Research Article Job advertisements are often worded in ways that might pose discrimination risks leading to the exclusion of certain groups of applicants, particularly in relation to their gender. Especially in male-dominated professions or leadership roles, the specific linguistic formulation of job postings acquires relevance if more women are to be attracted to apply. Various technologies have emerged that offer automated text screening, some of them even suggesting alternative formulations to increase gender inclusivity. In this study we analyze four software providers on the German market using a corpus of ∼160, 000 job ads from three different platforms. We identify the relevant social psychological research on gender and language that is at the scientific core of these technologies. We show that, despite sharing a common foundation, the four tools assess the potential for exclusion in job postings in a considerably divergent way on multiple levels of comparison. We discuss the levers in the software pipeline of all four technologies, as well as the potential effect of certain implementation decisions, such as string-based vs. semantic approaches to computational processing of natural language. We argue that the ‘technological translation’ of research is extremely involved and further studies of its use in practice are needed to assess the potential for more gender equality. Public Library of Science 2022-09-09 /pmc/articles/PMC9462703/ /pubmed/36084069 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274312 Text en © 2022 Mihaljević et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Mihaljević, Helena Müller, Ivana Dill, Katja Yollu-Tok, Aysel Towards gender-inclusive job postings: A data-driven comparison of augmented writing technologies |
title | Towards gender-inclusive job postings: A data-driven comparison of augmented writing technologies |
title_full | Towards gender-inclusive job postings: A data-driven comparison of augmented writing technologies |
title_fullStr | Towards gender-inclusive job postings: A data-driven comparison of augmented writing technologies |
title_full_unstemmed | Towards gender-inclusive job postings: A data-driven comparison of augmented writing technologies |
title_short | Towards gender-inclusive job postings: A data-driven comparison of augmented writing technologies |
title_sort | towards gender-inclusive job postings: a data-driven comparison of augmented writing technologies |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9462703/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36084069 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274312 |
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