Quango cuts ‘ambition’ and ‘leader’ from job ads as they’re too masculine

BOSSES have been told to stop advertising roles for ‘confident’, ‘ambitious’ or ‘decisive’ applicants – because the ‘masculine’ words are putting women off.

Quangocrats were accused of being patronising last night over plans to use ‘genderneutral’ language to boost numbers of women taking up on-the-job training.

The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education claims women are being deterred from applying for apprenticeships because of the use of ‘masculine’ language such as ‘challenging’ and ‘competitive’ in technical job roles. Instead, terms such as ‘understand’, ‘dependable’ and ‘cooperative’ should be considered.

Critics say the move is in fact offensive to women, who should be on a ‘level playing field’.

The quango will use ‘genderneutral’ language to outline the standards and content of revamped digital apprenticeships in areas including cyber-security and software development.

A ‘best practice guide’ will be sent to organisations advertising apprenticeships next month and the pilot scheme will be expanded to other areas if it is successful.

Ana Osbourne, from the institute, told the industry newspaper FE Week: ‘Research has shown that the language used in job adverts can make the job more or less appealing to one gender and therefore discourage women from applying for certain jobs.’

But Chris McGovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, condemned the move as ‘ totally patronising and quite offensive to women’.

‘It’s demeaning women and saying they have to make a special dispensation because they’re female,’ he said. ‘It’s important that we prepare all our workforce, including women, for the real world, where there’s a range of language used.

‘We shouldn’t be restricting or forbidding words like “challenging” in the workplace.’

He added: ‘They have got it completely wrong and it will send a shiver down the spine of a lot of people, where they feel they have to change their language to further feminise employment.’

The guidelines are being drawn up by Jo Morfee, of InnovateHer, which aims to tackle gender imbalance in the digital sector.

She said one of her organisation’s partners, Shop Direct, ‘saw a 40 per cent increase in female applicants for senior data analyst roles as a result of changing the language they used’.