Science1 publisher3 min readPublished
Women's stated job interest followed the advertised gender ratio in Emory's experiments
Psychologists at Emory ran questionnaire experiments with 1,680 US adults recruited on Prolific, and women reported more interest in jobs advertised as having more women, even when the abilities the ads listed were stereotypically male.
The Scientist · Science desk
What happened
- PLOS One published work by Emory psychologists built from a series of questionnaire experiments, some of them using hypothetical employment advertisements.
- A total of 1,680 U.S. adults aged 18 to 64 took part across the studies, recruited on the online testing platform Prolific.
- Women were more likely to express interest in jobs portrayed as having more female representation, and that held even when the abilities the ads specified were stereotypically associated with men.
- Emory psychology professor Stella Lourenco is first author, with co-authors Arber Tasimi, Kylee Novick and Ryno Kruger, now at Brigham Young University.
Compiled by The ScientistSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- decision An employer with few women in a role now has a choice about publishing the number, because in the experiment the ads portraying fewer women drew less interest from women.
- constraint Rewriting a posting's skill language toward dedication and away from innate aptitude is unlikely to offset a low stated share, since the representation effect survived stereotypically male ability wording.
- exposure A recruiting team that budgets on this as a lift in application volume is extrapolating from expressed interest by paid panelists reading invented ads.
Two existing explanations for the same disparity work through what a job is believed to demand. Field-specific ability beliefs theory holds that women may feel unwelcome in fields thought to require intrinsic brilliance, such as philosophy, economics and STEM, and more welcome in fields such as education and nursing, where the stereotype favors dedication and diligence [10]. The second, masculinity contest culture, applies to fields such as technology perceived to emphasize aggressiveness, assertiveness, independence, ambition and competitiveness [11]. The Emory group varied a third thing: who the ad said was already there.
"We wanted to tease out to what extent current gender representation matters to women's career preferences," Lourenco said [6]. "Does it matter more than perceptions about what it takes to succeed in a particular field and the workplace culture associated with it?" [7]
The first study tested whether a stated ratio would land on anything at all. Participants estimated an occupation's gender ratio on a sliding scale, and their average estimates correlated significantly with actual gender representation across 60 fields [9]. So participants already carry an approximate number, and an ad that portrays a ratio is adjusting an estimate they hold. The same participants rated belief statements on sliding scales, among them "This job requires a special aptitude that just can't be taught" [16].
Across the series, the effect of gender demographics was robust, and strongest among women [2]. Lourenco, who is first author, set that against the idea that representation is "mostly symbolic" [4]. "What we found is that gender representation is more consequential," she said. "It is perhaps a primary reason women decide whether to enter a particular occupation in the first place" [5].
The sample splits without remainder: 851 women and 829 men add to the reported total of 1,680, making women 50.7% of the panel [8][14]. That total covers the whole series of studies, not one experiment. The phys.org summary does not report effect sizes or how the participants were divided across the studies [17].
What the experiments measured is expressed interest, from paid online panelists reading hypothetical employment advertisements [1]. Applications submitted, offers accepted and time in the job were not observed, so Lourenco's inference to entry decisions runs one step beyond the outcome recorded. The correlational first study is the weaker link in the chain for the same reason: it shows that perceptions track reality, not that either one moves behavior.
The backdrop is a labor market women have largely joined. By 2023, 77% of prime working-age women in the United States held jobs outside the home, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics [12]. Women are about half the US population and still a minority in politics, technology, science and academia [15].
What to watch
- The PLOS One paper itself: effect sizes and per-experiment samples would show how large "more consequential" actually is.
- Whether men's interest tracked the advertised ratio too, since the summary calls the effect robust but strongest among women.
- A field test that randomizes representation disclosure in live postings and counts applications instead of stated interest.