Gender bias in the workplace is not only an obstacle to equality – it is also a major stumbling block for businesses looking to optimise their performance. After all, stronger diversity and inclusion policies have been shown to spark innovation and enhance commercial outcomes in numerous business areas. Higher proportions of women in leadership positions especially, and levels of inclusivity for female employees in general, are associated with superior rates of profit across a variety of metrics.

Despite this, gender bias persists in hiring across industries, with language use and organisational cultures routinely privileging male applicants and employees. Gender bias excludes or disadvantages roughly half the population, along with all the valuable talent therein – the impact this could have on your company’s performance cannot be overstated.

What is a gender bias decoder?

It's a tool that examines job adverts to identify words or phrases that might be subtly biased towards one gender. It helps ensure that the language used in job postings is neutral and inclusive, aiming to attract a diverse range of applicants without favouring men or women.

By identifying and altering masculine words and feminine words in your job adverts, our tool helps to create a more balanced presentation that appeals to a broader audience. This is crucial for combating gender-coded language and reducing bias in job advertisements. It specifically targets coded words to ensure neutrality and inclusiveness in your job descriptions.

Try our free Gender Decoder tool

This is an excellent place to start if you want to create a more diverse and inclusive working environment whilst simultaneously improving your chances of finding and onboarding top candidates.

This tool is adapted from Kat Matfield's Gender Decoder for Job Ads based on: Danielle Gaucher, Justin Friesen, and Aaron C. Kay (2011), Evidence That Gendered Wording in Job Advertisements Exists and Sustains Gender Inequality (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, July 2011, Vol 101(1), p109-28).