Title: 'We' versus 'you': exploring the extent of gendered language in purchasing and supply management job advertisements

Authors: Stephen Kelly; Nina Hasche; Vojtěch Klézl; Donna Marshall; Klaas Stek

Addresses: University of Salford, Salford, UK ' School of Business, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden ' School of Business, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden ' College of Business, UCD Earth Institute and Centre for Business and Society (CeBaS), University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland ' University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands

Abstract: This paper explores the use of gendered language in purchasing and supply management job advertisements across three English-speaking countries. We use secondary data from a global job advertisement website to analyse the extent to which gendered language is used. We explore if agentic, traditional masculine wording, or communal, traditional feminine wording, is used at different hierarchical levels of advertising for purchasing and supply management jobs. Our findings show that there is no significant evidence of a glass-ceiling effect. However, there may be evidence of a sticky-floor effect due to the communal language used in the assistant buyer and buyer job advertisements, which decreases significantly at higher levels. Agentic language use remained constant across the levels. We also found that certain agentic words are more often featured in senior-level advertisements.

Keywords: job advertisements; female; women; gender issues; gendered language; purchasing; supply management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPM.2024.138966

International Journal of Procurement Management, 2024 Vol.20 No.3, pp.365 - 383

Received: 21 Apr 2023
Accepted: 07 May 2023
Published online: 05 Jun 2024 *

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