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Comment by ictoan | Hacker News Reader

Did you read the full article? Or are you cherry-picking to tailor your criticism?

> Studies have shown that that women are less likely to respond to an ad that has overly masculine or aggressive language (despite being qualified), whereas men will apply regardless.

Having a job description more gender friendly encourages more women to apply and men will apply regardless.

You should read the article liked to this article - https://hbr.org/2014/08/why-women-dont-apply-for-jobs-unless...

Women apply to jobs only if they are 100% qualified whereas men doesn't get deterred by lack of qualification.

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> overly masculine or aggressive language

You mean:

- leading

- competitive

- objectives

- driven

- independently

And this is what is considered "masculine". Not only that sounds incredibly sexist and stereotypical, it is demeaning for women who would consider themselves possessing one or more of the above traits.

For more women to be confident to have these traits, society need to start encouraging girls to be leaders, competitors, driven and independent individuals.

For reference, I am a woman but I am often discouraged to show leadership skills or be competitive with others, especially with guys at work. I can feel the air change when I exhibit these traits. People start to distant themselves from me because I don't fit the culture norm. I feel I can do a much better job if I showed more feminine traits like listening more and being empathetic and showing I'm a team player.

So yeah, it is easy for a guy to be critical because he has no experience in the matter!

If you want to know more about how women are treated differently here's an article - https://www.fastcompany.com/40456604/these-women-entrepreneu...

> I am often discouraged to show leadership skills or be competitive with others, especially with guys at work.

Men are not immune to this either. I have been successful in many work endeavors in the past and drew praise from management, to discover soon after that half the team would subtly dislike me because I'd make their work look bad.

Also, competitive people with leadership skills are an asset to any company. I'd advise you and anyone else move on if you are not fairly valued, regardless of gender.

Won't less aggressive language result in more applications from those who are less than 100% qualified, whether male or female?

I don't see where the article shows that men will apply at the same rate regardless of aggressive language.

What's wrong with having more applications from less qualified candidates? The point of the interview process is to filter them out. The goal of having inclusive language is to encourage qualified candidates, who otherwise wouldn't have, to apply.

As cited in the study, a common reason to not apply if under-qualified is 'to avoid wasting the time of the interviewer', and I think this is a likely reason.

The trade-off of less aggressive language resulting in both more applicants but also a higher percentage of under-qualified applicants will eventually reach some inflection point where it becomes unproductive, as you're almost certain to already have a well-qualified fit in the batch of interviewees.

Men apply if they are 60% qualified and most women apply if they feel they are 100% qualified. Making the application description more female-friendly does not bring more under-qualified candidates. It brings those who doesn't feel as confident in their own ability but ARE qualified.

What you miss here is that men are often overconfident and women are under-confident. It has nothing to do with qualification. It has everything to do with confidence.

And yes, women are often less confident because tech is an industry often marketed for men.

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