Gender-Inclusive Language in Labour Markets:Lessons From a Digital Field Experiment

Abstract

This study leverages a digital field experiment in a labour market setting to examine whetherattitudinal effects translate into real-world behaviour, while offering broader lessons for the de-sign and interpretation of such experiments. Gender-inclusive language in job descriptions hasbeen shown to impact perceived fit, belonging, and occupational attractiveness, but its impacton actual behaviour remains uncertain. We used a crowdworking platform as an experimentallabour market, where sign-up for our advertised study itself serves as an outcome variable. Inthis setting, we thus tested whether the use of gender-inclusive language in a job advertisementfor a maths task increases both the share of women who sign-up and their subsequent perfor-mance. We find no effect of gender-inclusive language on either the share of women or theirperformance. We provide a look behind the scenes of running a digital field experiment, reflect-ing on challenges along the way. We used the opportunity to learn about design elements thatmay have prevented the predicted effect from arising, and the moderating theoretical variablesthey allude to. One key conjecture that emerged from our assessment is that in tight labourmarkets, such as the crowdfunding platform we studied, participation is less gendered, with anattenuating effect on gendered performance expectations.