How does gender and language in Egyptian online recruitment affect applicants’ perceived hireability and suitability?

The aim of this experiment is to explore the impact of inclusive language compared to masculine language in Arabic on applicants with different genders. Arabic is a grammatically gendered language that does not possess a neuter grammatical form, but instead possesses two gender distinctions: masculine and feminine. Historically and presently, Arabic relies on the use of the masculine form as the default. Specifically, the masculine form is often used to refer to someone with unspecified gender (i.e., where there is ambiguity) or to refer to a mixed gender group (Aoun et al., 2009). This usage is common amongst many natural and grammatical gender languages such as Spanish, French and German. However, there is a growing movement towards the use of gender-inclusive alternatives instead of the masculine in various countries (e.g., France, Germany, and Switzerland), especially in recruitment settings. This can be seen in the literature on the use of gender-inclusive language in recruitment and its effect on people’s cognitions, emotions, and behaviours (Braun et al., 2005; Stout & Dasgupta, 2011; Hodel et al., 2017; Sato et al., 2016; Sato et al., 2013; Sczesny et al., 2016; Stahlberg et al., 2001). This movement is yet to extend to Egypt, as the majority of job advertisements in online recruitment rely on the use of masculine grammatical gender for senior and high-paid positions (Soliman, 2023).Therefore, we investigate how language affects applicants’ perceived suitability and fit, wage expectations, and hireability in an attempt to motivate a movement away from the use of masculine grammatical gender and instead promote the use of gender-inclusive alternatives in the language used in recruitment. This is a parallel study to another preregistered experiment titled “how does gendered language in Arabic affect perceivers' assumed job appeal, sense of belonging, and chance of success of an applicant in a job-seeking experiment?” (Soliman & Sczesny, 2023). Like the other experiment, this study follows a 2 (Applicant Gender: woman, man) x 2 (Language Condition: masculine, inclusive) between-participants design and instead targets those with over 5 years of work experience and people with experience working in HR, headhunting, or recruitment. Participants will be asked to imagine that they are helping their company recruit and hire new personnel and that they will be presented with the job specifications and an applicant to evaluate. Participants will evaluate the applicant based on their suitability and fit, wage expectations, and will be asked to give a judgement over whether they would recommend the applicant for the position at their company.