Are entrepreneurial Job Advertisements Gendered? An
Examination of Gender-related Wording in Entrepreneurial
Recruitment-Messages
Faculty of Economics & Business
Master of Science in Business Administration
Entrepreneurship & Innovation Track
Student: Helen Scheepers
Student ID: 10868534
Date of Submission: 24th of June 2016 Supervisor: Dr. Y. Engel
STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY
This document is written by Helen Scheepers who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document. I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it.
The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Statement of Originality ... 2
List of Tables ... 5
Abstract ... 6
Theoretical Development and Hypotheses ...11
Signalling Theory ...11
The nature of gendered-wording in recruitment messages ... 12
Entrepreneurial Orientation ... 15
Origins of Gendered wording in job advertisements ... 18
Occupational Sex Segregation ... 19
Social Role Theory and Social Dominance Theory as potential mechanism for gendered wording in job advertisements ... 22
Data and Method ... 25
Design ... 25
Sample... 26
Process of word selection... 26
Dependent Variable ... 29
Independent Variable ... 29
Data Analyses... 30
External Validity ... 35 Reliability ... 35 Results ... 36 Preliminary Analysis ... 36 Hypothesis Testing ... 40 Discussion ... 47
Theoretical and practical implications ... 50
Limitations and Future direction ... 53
Conclusion ... 56
References ... Error! Bookmark not defined. Appendix ... 61
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1 Gender-dominated Occupations 61
Table 2 Dictionaries LIWC 61
Table 3 Descriptive and Correlations Sample 1 42
Table 4 Descriptive and Correlations Sample 2 42
Table 5.1 Inter-correlation of EO and masculinity, Sample 1 45 Table 5.2 Inter-correlation of EO and masculinity, Sample 1 45 Table 6 Model of predictors of masculine wording in
job advertisements 47
Table 7 Linear Model of predictors (Gender-occupational areas) for EO on job advertisements
Table 8 Partial Correlation: Male-dominated occupation areas
as control variable on EO dimensions 49
ABSTRACT
The underrepresentation of women in entrepreneurship is conspicuous, but remains stable and understudied leading to a notable research gap within the entrepreneurial literature. This present study zooms into one crucial mechanism of such gender inequality in entrepreneurship by scrutinizing entrepreneurs’ actions in recruitment decisions, which appear to be based upon and rationalized by predetermined stereotypes (Mastromoro, 2014). Here, our study aims to explore the signalling of gendered stereotypes and language cues within job advertisements by recruiters, which has been reported as one potential mechanism of gender inequality by other studies before (Gaucher et al., 2011; Bem & Bem, 1973). Employing a content analysis by investigating
gendered wording in entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial job advertisements, results confirm that gendered language cues in entrepreneurial job advertisements exist by demonstrating that entrepreneurial job advertisements contain a fairly higher proportion on masculine wording compared to feminine wording. Further, in respect to former studies, we propose that gendered occupation areas predict gendered wording in job advertisements. Results indicate no difference in the wording in respect to gendered occupation areas. However, this present study presents a first coherent reasoning for gendered wording potentially maintaining underrepresentation of women in entrepreneurship.
Keywords: gender inequality, entrepreneurship, recruitment materials, signalling theory, gendered-wording, entrepreneurial orientation
ARE ENTREPRENEURIAL JOB ADVERTISEMENTS GENDERED? AN
EXAMINATION OF GENDER-RELATED WORDING IN ENTREPRENEURIAL
RECRUITMENT-MESSAGES
Although the number of female entrepreneurs has increased dramatically in the recent years (De Bruin, Brush, & Welter, 2006), in western industrial countries, men are still twice as active in entrepreneurship than women (Wagner, 2006). In fact, men are still in the majority in “the high-risk world of entrepreneurship and venture-capital backed start-ups” (Mollick, 2015). Such under-representation of women may be generally explained by occupational sex
segregation identifying various forms of gender inequality (Englang et al., 2007). Referring to gender inequality, generally, underrepresentation of women can be observed in fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Brooks, 2013), and even as the women-share of the higher-educated/academic workforce has increased (Beede et al., 2011), women are somewhat of a rarity in many of these occupations. This is especially true for the field of entrepreneurship where a masculine stereotype is continuously being reinforced by the powerful association between entrepreneurship and predominantly masculine characteristics (Gupta et al. 2009). Yet, while the evidence for entrepreneurship as a “male-typed” occupational environment is all-apparent, the specific forces sustaining and strengthening this unjust parity are poorly understood.
A crucial step in the development of entrepreneurial ventures that is also important as a potential lever for the integration of women in entrepreneurship is the recruitment of new
employees in start-up firms. While employee recruitment in new firms is a source of competitive advantage (Greer et al., 2015), the efficient use of Human Resource Management practices in such firms is problematic for entrepreneurs who lack of resources and struggle to combat
liabilities of newness and smallness (Dahl and Klepper, 2015). This means that specifically when it comes to employee recruitment, entrepreneurs face great challenges in applying the same recruitment procedures and guidelines used in large established corporations (Cardon and Stevens, 2004). Even more, entrepreneurial firms who, in competing for talent, are required to distinguish themselves from incumbent firms tend to play the only card they have going – their uniquely entrepreneurial character. That is, in their attempt to attract prospective employees start-up firms would tend to highlight their differentiating factors such as small size, aggressive approach, speed, flexibility, risk taking and pro-activeness (Cardon and Steven, 2004). As it happens, these entrepreneurial characteristics are not only representations of what it takes to work in a new firm but are also overlapping with masculine characteristics such that the parity between entrepreneurial descriptors and words used to signal masculine qualities is simply staggering (Gupta et al., 2009; Gupta et al., 2008; Ahl, 2006; Thébaud, 2015; Thébaud, 2010; Ah;, 2002). As a consequence, recruitment material in which entrepreneurs describe their firm characteristics and required qualities of candidates are most sensitive to this “think
entrepreneurial, think male” bias.
Herein, we focus on such recruitment practice: the use of job advertisements to attract job seekers. Gaining attention and awareness of potential job candidates, communication through recruitment messages is highly important for entrepreneurs and is often used as the primary recruitment source (Cardon and Steven, 2004). Referring to communication, the presence of linguistic cues in job advertisements is generally an understudied area and its implications remain poorly understood in the context of start-up employee recruitment. Still, a recent and notable study by Gaucher, Friesen & Kay (2011) looks into that delicate subject matter by inspecting linguistic cues in job advertisements as a potential mechanism for occupational sex
segregation and the underrepresentation of women in male-dominated occupation areas. Their study suggests that gendered-wording of job advertisement play an important role in the appeal of jobs for candidates. Hence, Gaucher et al. (2011) considered gendered wording as an
institutional level mechanism that results in the maintenance of gender inequality. In fact, their research showed that recruitment materials entail greater masculine wording when male-dominated occupational fields were addressed. Simply put, firms within male-male-dominated fields made use of a more masculine wording by using words associated with male stereotypes. Building on this intriguing finding, we pose a related question: Whether the same mechanism operates in sustaining the under-representation of women in entrepreneurship?
Looking more deeply into this question, we extend Gaucher et al. (2011), by building on the observation that entrepreneurial words overlap with masculine words (Gupta, 2009) and examining the extent that recruitment messages using ‘entrepreneurial’ wording are indeed signalling a biasing gender stereotype. More specifically, we aim to investigate the following research question:
To what extent are recruitment messages that use a larger proportion of entrepreneurial words also use a larger proportion of masculine words and whether the existence of such parity is stronger for job advertisements in male dominated occupations?
In order to investigate this question we conducted a content analysis to delve into gendered wording of entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial job advertisements. Using signalling theory and considering subject-areas of gendered stereotypes, screening-oriented messaging, entrepreneurial orientation, and the background of occupational sex segregation,
social role theory and social dominance theory to develop our hypotheses, we tested two expectations that firstly entrepreneurial job advertisements contain a greater number of
entrepreneurial and masculine words and that signalling entrepreneurial orientation predicts such wording; and secondly that job advertisements for male-dominated occupations use a greater number of masculine and entrepreneurial words signalling entrepreneurial orientation. Our findings, which confirm that entrepreneurial job advertisements contain a greater number of masculine wording than feminine wording, and such masculine worded job advertisements signal entrepreneurial orientation to a high degree, while disconfirming that male-dominated
occupation areas do not affect gendered wording, contribute to theory in several ways. First, signalling theory, in combination with screening-oriented messaging and gender stereotypes carries major importance for the emergence of gendered wording in entrepreneurial recruitment materials and needs to be considered by entrepreneurs as well as other recruiters while recruiting in order to not discriminate female stereotypical candidates, who may not identify with certain language cues in recruitment materials related to masculinity and entrepreneurship.
Subsequently, the aspect of occupational sex segregation as well as potential mechanisms such as social role theory and social dominance theory, providing reasoning for the emergence of gendered words in respect to gendered groups, needs to be considered for the field of
entrepreneurship to shed light into the unstudied complex topic of gendered-wording in
entrepreneurial recruitment materials in order to gain full understanding for the reasoning for an underrepresentation of women in entrepreneurship.
This present study, in the following, will proceed to a comprehensive conclusion as followed. The theoretical development, as a whole, supports and leads to the underlying and
testable hypotheses of this study. The methodology will follow subsequently and will indicate the research design to test the hypothesis, the results obtained and concluding discussion about all findings.
THEORETICAL DEVELOPMENT AND HYPOTHESES
In the following, the main theoretical concepts that are important for this research will be discussed. The main focus is put onto signalling theory and the nature of gendered wording in recruitment messages. Further, relevant insight into the construct of entrepreneurial orientation, occupational sex segregation and into the theories of social role theory and dominance theory are provided.
Signalling Theory
Signalling theory suggests that information asymmetries influence decisions making in a wide variety of contexts (Spence, 1973). Thus, signalling theory is directly relevant to the present discussion and the aspect of wording in job advertisements as signalling theory explains that the sender of such job advertisements decides how to send a signal in terms of
communication and bringing information across, and the receivers decide how to interpret such signals and the underlying information (Connelly et al. 2011).
More specifically, Connely et al. (2011) illustrated the key concepts of signalling by providing an explanation about the signalling environment in a form of a signalling timeline. The signalling timeline consists of four elements namely signaller, signal, receiver and feedback. Signallers are understood as the ‘insiders’ who gain information about an individual, product, or organisation, which is not available to outsiders (Connelly et al., 2011). In the presence of this study, we identify the firms or recruiters as the signallers. Those firms or recruiters send out
signals, understood as the job advertisements within this study, which are identified as the information sent from the signaller to the receiver. The receiver is the third element of the signalling environment and seen as the outsiders lacking on information and within the context of this study understood as job candidates. Feedback, as final element of the signal timeline, is the response of the receiver, which is sent back to the signaller and serves as a measurement of the effectiveness of the signal, thus in our context, the feedback indicates to what extent job candidates are attracted by the job advertisement. In sum, in terms of job advertisements, the sender’s (signallers) intention (signals) as well as the receiver’s interpretation (feedback) of such signals decides upon in what way a job advertisement will be eventually perceived and
understood. (Connelly et al., 2011). In the context of recruiting, a signal could possibly highlight a gender’s preference through a particular use of language and wording (e.g., Gaucher et al., 2011). Directly relevant for our study is the element of the signal within the signalling timeline, which has been identified as the job advertisements within our context. Signalling theory provides this study with fundamental theoretical base for that aspect. To further explicate our reasoning, we introduce the subject-area of screening-oriented messages in recruitment.
The nature of gendered-wording in recruitment messages
Screening-orientated messages. Generally, firms make use of a screening orientation in
their recruitment communication in order to attract a certain pool of candidates (Dineen & Williamson, 2012). Here, in the context of our study, the use of language shares primary importance, and evidence shows that language differs between genders. Seeing the fact that according to Haas (1997) female and male speeches differ of each other in terms of topic, content and use, such difference in language may imply distinctive signals within recruitment messages (Haas, 1997). Those facts strength the aspect that a signal sent by a recruiter could
possibly highlight a gender’s preference through a particular use of language. Such differences in language between genders are well documented (Carli, 1990), and suggest that the use of
language reflects stereotypical gender roles.
Stereotypical gender roles. Taking a look into such stereotypical gender-roles, men are
generally associated with leadership and agency, where in contrast, women are perceived to be more interpersonally oriented (Eagly & Karau, 1991). This aspect carries high importance by hinting that such stereotypical gender-roles may be represented in job advertisements, too. Thus, distinguishing further in the different use of language, men, in contrast to women, are observed to apply a more direct form of communication by using a more non-standard form (Haas, 1997), whereas women are perceived using more communal style than men and refer more to social and emotional words in their use of language (Haas, 1997). Thus, as a direct consequence and as suggested above, screening-oriented signals sent by firms may entail certain gendered-wording intentionally or unintentionally (Mastromoro, 2013). A study by Mastromoro (2013) supported the findings of the study by Gaucher et al. (2011) and suggested that language cues in job
advertisements exists in fact and that most common words associated with masculine stereotypes are used in such job advertisements such as ‘leading’ or ‘competition’.
In the presence of this discussion and keeping the context of this work in mind, the entrepreneurial dimension of such stereotypes linked to linguistic style is most relevant. Here, a study by Gupta et al. (2009) investigated the relationship between gender stereotypes and entrepreneurial intentions by men and women. Generally, according to Gupta et al. (2009) an entrepreneur is perceived to follow masculine traits and behaviour patterns. Stereotypical attributes of a traditional entrepreneur are described as unusual and extraordinary figure with high levels of achievement orientation, optimism, self-efficacy, internal focus of control,
cognitive skills and tolerance for ambiguity above the ordinary (Shane & Venkatarman, 2001). In addition, Ahl (2006) compares typical entrepreneurial characteristics with masculine
characterises based on the masculinity index by Bem (1981) and suggests that entrepreneurship is neither neutral nor feminine but a very masculine concept based on the aspect that
entrepreneurial and masculine characteristics conform to each other. Looking further into such stereotypes, according to Sexton and Bowman-Upton (1990) nine different personality traits explain typical attributes belonging to the field of entrepreneurship: conformity, energy level, interpersonal affect, risk taking, social adroitness, autonomy, change and harm avoidance. Comparing those attributes to typical masculine characteristics, it soon becomes obvious that most of those entrepreneurial attributes are rather associated to men’s attributes.
In sum, entrepreneurial stereotypes are well documented and shown to overlap with masculine stereotypical attributes. Thus within our work, we predict that entrepreneurial language cues in terms of wording are perceived as masculine based on similar stereotypical attributes and characteristics between entrepreneurs and men.
On the basis of findings of past research and the tenets of signalling theory, we propose that firms may use a screening oriented recruitment by applying gendered wording based on gendered-stereotypical characteristics. Drawing from the literature, we have reasoned that gendered-wording may exist in job advertisements. Furthermore, we predict that the industry of entrepreneurship is perceived as highly masculine and that such masculinity of the industry shows an effect on the wording in job advertisement within an entrepreneurial setting. Based on our discussed findings and literature, we pose the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1a: Job advertisements within an entrepreneurial setting use a greater number of entrepreneurial words and therefore a greater number of masculine words.
Entrepreneurial Orientation
Classifying the entrepreneurial nature of firms, industries, or in our context, job advertisements, the construct of entrepreneurial orientation helps to characterise
entrepreneurship. Within our work, we predict that entrepreneurial job advertisements use a greater proportion of masculine words, but to find definite evidence for the entrepreneurial level of job advertisements, we first need to be able to identify which words used in job advertisement can be considered as “entrepreneurial”.
Generally, entrepreneurial orientation serves as a firm-level strategic orientation about decision-making practices, managerial philosophies and strategic behaviours, which are entrepreneurial in nature (Anderson et al., 2015). Within this study, we use the Lumpkin and Dess (1996) conceptualization of entrepreneurial orientation referring to five dimensions namely autonomy, competitive aggressiveness, innovativeness, pro-activeness and risk-taking, serving as five independent constructs modelling the entrepreneurial level (Lumpkin & Dess, 1996). As mentioned above, Lumpkin and Dess (1996) present entrepreneurial orientation as a
superordinate construct of five independent dimensions and is considered to be a phenomenon and is therefore amenable to reflective measurement models. Miller (1983) supports the conceptualization of five dimensions by explaining that entrepreneurs with an entrepreneurial orientation “ […] engage in product market innovation, undertakes somewhat risky ventures and is first to come up with proactive innovations, beating competitors to the punch”. Based on that, within this work, the wording of entrepreneurial job advertisements will be measured upon the entrepreneurial orientation to assure the entrepreneurial level of such job advertisements. More in detail, to show the relevance of the entrepreneurial orientation for our work, we briefly identify each dimension within the context of our study.
The dimension of Autonomy refers to the idea behind being an autonomous actor actively realizing new opportunities without being constraint by existing organizational processes and structures (Lumpkin & Dess, 1996). Autonomy indicates the traditional idea of entrepreneurship, meaning an entrepreneur is understood as a self-determined pioneer creating a new business based on a new, better, and unique idea compared to all existing ideas (Lumpkin & Dess, 1996). According to our work, we suggest that autonomy is a major characteristic of an entrepreneur and therefore wording describing the characteristics of autonomy such as authorization, freedom, independent, self-directed or self-ruling may be found in entrepreneurial job advertisements.
Looking further into the dimension of Innovativeness, Schumpeter (1942) and his approach of creative destruction, which emphasizes that a market needs to re-create itself by creating new goods, new services and new combinations based on innovation leading to firm’s growth and competitive advantage, referred to the fact that innovativeness is one main
characteristics of entrepreneurship (Lumpkin & Dess, 1996). Due to that, innovativeness became a crucial factor to characterize entrepreneurship. Innovativeness reflects the tendency to create new ideas, services, products, technologies, etcetera. Thus an innovative orientation leads very much to an entrepreneurial behaviour and therefore may identify the entrepreneurial dimension of job advertisements within our work. Common wording describing innovativeness are create, imagine, inspiration, vision, or discover.
Competitive aggressiveness within an entrepreneurial setting refers to the challenge of outperforming competitors and gaining competitive advantage over competitors as a new entrant in the market (Lumpkin & Dess, 1996). According to Lumpkin & Dess (1996), in
entrepreneurship, competitive aggressiveness reflects the willingness to not rely on traditional methods but to be unconventional to gain competitive advantage. Also in our context, job
advertisements may present such incitements by using certain wording. Wording associated with competitive aggressiveness are therefore underlying such characteristics and incitements:
ambitious, conflicting, aggressive, fight, or jockey-for-position.
The term of pro-activeness is defined as “acting in anticipating of future problems, needs, or changes” (Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, 1991 : 937) and refers to the idea of forward-looking enhanced by innovative and new-venturing activity (Lumpkin & Dess, 1996). Due to that, pro-activeness shares a high importance to an entrepreneurial orientation as it emphasizes the importance of being a first-mover and taking initiate as an entrepreneur. Such characteristics may also play an important role for job candidates within an entrepreneurial setting and may be stressed in job advertisements. Wording identifying pro-activeness are forecast, forward-looking, exploration or opportunity-seeking.
The last dimension of risk-taking suggests that uncertainty needs to be accepted while deciding for costly actions. Generally, all theories of entrepreneurship agree upon the fact that entrepreneurship by definition involves the aspect of taking risk (Lumpkin & Dess, 1996). Therefore, also that dimension may emerge in job advertisements when supporting an
entrepreneurial orientation. Risk-taking is explained by wording such as adventurous, chance, brave, uncertain or reckless.
On the basis of the entrepreneurial orientation construct and the prediction that
entrepreneurial job advertisements signal a certain level of entrepreneurial orientation but show also a high degree on masculinity, we provide the following hypothesis as an extension to hypothesis 1a.
Hypothesis 1b: The extent to which job ads signal (1) autonomy, (2) competitive aggressiveness, (3) innovativeness, (4) pro-activeness, and (5) risk taking is positively associated to the number of masculine words in those ads.
Origins of Gendered wording in job advertisements
While our hypothesis 1a and 1b test whether entrepreneurial job advertisements use a greater proportion of masculine words (1a) and the relationship between the entrepreneurial orientation sub-dimensions and masculinity (1b), the study by Gaucher et al. (2011), as
mentioned beforehand, as well as a study by Bem and Bem (1973), took one step further within this research matter, and considered gendered wording as an institutional mechanism that results in inequality maintenance. Over 30 years ago Bem and Bem (1973) suggested that job
advertisements underlying a preference for male applicants kept women away from applying, by explicitly referring to men in the job advertisements, and by placing such job advertisements in sex-segregated columns in newspapers. Such obvious gender biases in job advertisements are less common nowadays due to civil right legislation. Yet, Gaucher et al. (2011), examined a more implicit and less obvious mechanism sustain gender imbalances in the use of job
advertisements. They observed wording of job advertisements as well as linked such gendered-wording to gender-dominated occupational areas. Their findings suggest that job advertisements for male-dominated jobs contain greater proportion of masculine wording than such job
advertisement for female-dominated occupations. Here, social dominance theory and social role theory were used as the two main explanations for their observations. Social role theory predicts that the difference in the presence of feminine wording between male- and female-dominated occupations should have been found in social roles driving the emergence of gendered wording, whereas social dominance perspective, on the contrary, predicts an asymmetric pattern of wording differences. By briefly representing the study by Gaucher et al. (2011) and their theoretical development and findings, our work aims to take these ideas a step further by
development of their study is indeed relevant and interesting for our work, too, so that both, social role theory and social dominance theory are relevant for the present discussion of our study and will be elaborated on very shortly after introducing the relevant topic of occupational sex segregation, which serves as a background to this study.
Occupational Sex Segregation
Strengthening the prediction that the industry of entrepreneurship is male-dominated, considering the findings by Gaucher et al. (2011), and should we find support for the
hypothesized masculinity of entrepreneurial job advertisements, the aspect of male-dominant occupation areas needs to be taken into consideration, too.
Empirical evidence shows that men’s and women’s jobs differ dramatically across sectors, industries, occupations or types of jobs (World development plan, 2012). However, occupational sex segregation, so the observation that men and women are employed in distinctive different occupations, understood as male-dominated and female-dominated occupations, remains fairly stable on the labour market within the Western industrial societies (Busch, 2013). Thus men and women still work in either male- or female-dominated occupations (Reskin, 1993). But more interesting for our work is the question whether such occupational sex segregation might play a role in the underrepresentation of women in entrepreneurship.
According to Anker (1997) occupational sex segregation exists due to the choice of employees, meaning that men’s and women’s orientation towards occupations differ which leads to the fact that men and women prefer, choose, or ‘self-select’ to work in different occupations (Kmec, 2005). Furthermore, it appears that the traditional and social male and female role model and typical gendered-stereotypes influence the occupation choice and might be used on the part of firms while recruiting (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt und Berufsfosrchung, 2014).
Taking the approach of Gaucher et al. (2011) in mind, such male- and female-dominated job categories, or in our study referred to occupation areas, are identified as the following: Men are generally perceived to belong rather to the field of math and science, whereas women are more inclined with arts and languages (Brooks, 2013). Thus, certain job categories are associated with the descriptive gender-related stereotypes. Engineering, surgery and judiciary are not
surprisingly connected to a men’s dominated work field, while nursing and servicing tend to be feminine dominated jobs (Heilman, 1983). Clarifying such categories once more for our own work, we rely on Statistics of Bureau of Labour of the United States Department of Labor (2015); dataset of the statistical federal state Europe (2012); and Amsterdam Institute for
Advanced Labour Studies (2002). According to the datasets, typical men-dominated occupations are Construction (96,8 per cent); Natural Resources (95,3 per cent); Engineering (92,6 per cent) or IT (75,3 per cent), whereas the occupations of Health- Care (84,1 per cent); Education and Training (77,5 per cent); or Administration (72,2 per cent) are understood as female-dominated (Appendix A, Table A1) (Bureau of Labor statistics, 2015; Mischke & Wingerter, 2012).
Sticking to this argumentation and the fairly strong differences of male and female stereotypes and occupation areas, it becomes obvious once more, that entrepreneurial institutions may transmit masculinity and might rather simulate with male-dominated occupations. However, within our work, the focus on entrepreneurship is most crucial and therefore it is relevant to understand which occupations might correspond entrepreneurial. Typical entrepreneurial industries are not empirically proven. Yet, some industries are discussed to be fairly beneficial for entrepreneurship. According to Hull (2013) the top five industries for entrepreneurship are the following: Internet and Data Service; Computer Systems and Software Service; Accounting Services; Business Consulting; and Home Health Care. Comparing such five industries with the
gendered-dominated occupations, it is recognizable that each category of gendered-occupation areas is corresponding to the top five entrepreneurial industries. The industries of Internet and Data Service and Computer Systems and Software Services correspond to male-dominated occupation areas, while Accounting Services and Business Management belong to gender-neutral occupation areas. Striking, and rather unexpectedly is the correspondence of the industry of Home Health care as a female-dominated occupation area, which remains the only
correspondence though. However, this aspect carries on high importance for our work. Despite the fact, the female-dominated occupation areas are not very much entrepreneurial; the Health-care industry may be underestimated in that case as the health Health-care economy is “morphing as we watch”, while driven by consumer activism, digital technology and health-care reforms (Hixon (2014). Jain and Tsang (2014) agree upon on as on-going changes in policy, technology and industry culture begin to create unprecedented opportunities and in addition, dynamics such as the access to data to understand and address problem better or the aspect that consumer
technology offering direct access to patients enables potential drivers for new era of health care innovation. Consequently, we kept such aspects in mind and dared to consider the health-care as potentially entrepreneurial.
As argued before, Mastromoro (2013) suggest that occupational segregation accounts for other’s actions namely employer’s actions stating that employers may be guilty of statistical discrimination while making recruitment decisions, which are mostly based upon and
rationalized by predetermined stereotypes. Here, Mastromoro relies on the perspective of Bielby and Baron (1986) stating the following: “ […] profit-maximizing employers will reserve jobs with high replacement costs for the group with the greater expected productivity. Group differences may in fact be small relative to variation within groups; there may be many female
applicants with lower quit propensities and greater work commitment than the average male applicant. But if employers are unable to obtain this information for individual applicants, expected profits are maximized by segregating workers by sex. The result is discrimination because the applicant or employee is being judged on the basis of knowledge about their ‘group’ rather than about their individual characteristics.” Thus, this statement strengthen the idea that employers, or firms possibly perpetuate occupational sex segregation and may apply certain techniques within recruitment to attract a certain ‘group’ of candidates. As this work puts the focus on the language of recruitment messages, in particular, gendered language or gender cues in job advertisements may explain a potential method to perpetuate occupational sex segregation.
In studying better this topic and after introducing occupation sex segregation as background for this present study, we will elaborate on the social role theory and social
dominance theory to provide potential reasoning for wording differences in job advertisement in terms of gender-dominated occupation areas.
Social Role Theory and Social Dominance Theory as potential mechanism for gendered
wording in job advertisements
After widely explicating the nature of gendered wording due to stereotypes and linguistic cues resulting in the difference in the way men and women use daily language (Haas, 1997), social role theory and social dominance theory suggests how gendered wording might emerge in job advertisements in respect to gender-dominated occupation areas (Eagly, 1987). Social role theory is based on the principle that men behave differently than women in social situations and take in distinctive roles based to their stereotypical characteristics (Eagly, 1987). Generally, gender roles are understood to be “consensual beliefs” (Eagly & Karau, 2002) about the attributes of women and men. Eagly (2002) defines these beliefs as more than beliefs about
attributes of women and men, as those beliefs stand in relation to normative expectations describing qualities and behavioural tendencies believed to be desirable for each sex. In this sense, gender stereotypes emerge out of observing people in their sex-typical social roles and are driven by the natural differences between men and women (Eagly et al., 2000). Thus such gender stereotypes contribute to the notion that male- and female-specific careers exist (Eagly, 2000). Social role theory provides an essential baseline for this research by explicating how far certain stereotypes are allocated to a character or even male- and female-dominated careers based on expectations and observations (Eagly, 1987). Thus, social role theory may provide reasoning for gendered wording in job advertisements due to the inference-based perceptual process whereby gendered language emerges depending on which gender is predominant (Gaucher et al., 2011). Meaning in a more practical matter, assuming that men are more associated with agency, as many men can be found in that field, then such traits associated with men may appear in the wording of job advertisements (Gaucher et al., 2011). So, transforming this proposition into the context of this study, we predict that traits associated with the very masculine field of
entrepreneurship may appear in the wording of job advertisements.
We hold to this prediction for one moment and introduce the social dominance theory, which, on the contrary, states that individuals and structural factors contribute to certain forms of societal group-based inequality (e.g. group-based discrimination, racism, sexism)(Sidanius et al., 2004). Despite of scrutinize why people stereotype, are prejudice or discriminate, social
dominance theory focuses on the question why human societies tend to organize groups based on hierarchies and suggests that group-based hierarchies and inequality are driven and maintained by systematic institutional and individual discrimination (Sidanius et al., 2004). Thus, most relevant within the discussion is the aspect that social dominance theory suggests that gendered
language may be used in job advertisements to reinforce existing gender inequalities, such as keeping women out of male-occupied or men out of female-occupied areas.
Concluding, social role theory takes the approach that gendered-wording in job
advertisements arise from observations and expectations of differences in role-based behaviour and as mentioned above, predicts that gendered-wording appears in job advertisements,
depending on the predominant gender, as a result of inference-based perceptual process. Social dominance theory, in contrast, propose that gendered-wording in job advertisements serves as institutional practice to keep women out of male-dominated groups and conversely (Gaucher et al., 2011).
In summary, the strong stereotypical association of male and female characteristics and the empirical evidence that entrepreneurship is typically seen as a masculine field and that both, male and female entrepreneurs are male-typed occupations (Gupta et al., 2009), leads to the assumption that the description of an entrepreneurial job advertisements also followed by such (masculine) stereotypes, signals that to job seekers. Based on those assumptions and considering the social role theory and social dominance theory, we predict that a higher proportion of
masculine and entrepreneurial wording occur in job advertisements within a male-dominant occupation:
Hypothesis 2: Job advertisements for male-dominated occupations contain higher proportion of masculine words as well as entrepreneurial words by signalling (1)
autonomy, (2) competitive aggressiveness, (3) innovativeness, (4) pro-activeness, and (5) risk taking.
In summary, entrepreneurial job advertisements are expected to be highly masculine, as the stereotypical masculinity attributes of male-type occupations of entrepreneurship and due to
the fact that entrepreneurial wording has a high overlap with masculine wording, as the masculine and entrepreneurial dictionary used in this work prove a high correlation. Male-worded job advertisements are based on male-organised screening messages, which in turn results in job advertisements addressing candidates who identify with masculine stereotypes. Such incident potentially sequels in the aspect that candidates identifying with feminine stereotypes are attracted less to job advertisements of entrepreneurs, which consequently eventuate in an under-representation of women in the field of entrepreneurship.
DATA AND METHOD
The following section introduces the research design of this work. In particular, as this research used a content analysis, we explained such content analysis procedures more in detail by elaborating the design, sample and process of word selection. Further, elements related to content validity, external validity, reliability and dimensionality were discussed. In a last step, the analysis of this work was briefly described.
Design
This research serves as an explanatory study, by investigating masculine and entrepreneurial wording in entrepreneurial job advertisement and by expecting that entrepreneurial job advertisements within male-dominated occupations contain greater proportion of masculine words and entrepreneurial words. The hypotheses of this study were explored by applying a content analysis, here, we used the tool of Linguistic Inquiry And Word Count (LIWC) for computer-assisted coding. The content of job advertisements were randomly collected of two job-searching websites.
Sample
We obtained applicable content of electric job advertisements for our study from leading job-searching websites. Text-retrieval software was used to efficiently download electric job advertisements in their entirety. In this matter of course, we collected a non-random sample (Saunders & Lewis, 2012) of job advertisements within Europe. The main sample set was taken from Workinstartups.com (N=2774) who provide job advertisements of start-ups. To make comparison between job advertisements of entrepreneurship and enterprises, a second sample was taken from the job-searching website of Eurojobs.com (N= 846). To ensure a great sample size, it has been looked into electric English job advertisements from the whole of Europe without any further limitation in job categories such as job industry, job profession or job city.
Process of word selection
Generally, the underlying principle of content analysis is that text can be classified through certain wording and therefore categorized into content categories, where each category consists of one or many similar words or word phrases and each word or phrase occurrence can be counted and compared analytically (Kothari et al., 2009). Thus for computer text content analysis, a codebook of sorts word categories (for example, grouping together similar words associated with gender stereotypes) is needed, so that such word groups can be identified and analytically compared. Within our work, a first appraisal of the content domain was gained by reviewing literature dealing with a similar approach in terms of gendered-wording. To test hypothesis 1, we obtained a word list of masculine and feminine wording, which is based on empirical evidence and literature by Ahl (2006); Brannon & Juni (1984); Gaucher et al. (2011); and Hosoda and Stone (2000), dealing with a similar research approach before. Further we obtained a list of entrepreneurial wording, which is taken of the word list of entrepreneurial
orientation construct (Lumpkin and Dess, 1996). This word list, containing a total of 224 words, is a more discrete and detailed dictionary of word list for each of five dimensions explaining entrepreneurial orientation: autonomy, innovation, pro-activeness, competitive aggressiveness and risk-taking (Lumpkin and Dess, 1996), which also has been used in notable former study before such by Short et al. (2010); Moss et al. (2014) and Anderson et al. (2015). The study by Short et al. (2010) developed their word list with the aid of Rodale’s (1978) ‘The synonym Finder’ and added words signalling entrepreneurship to their word list additionally. Thus, our study, used the word list of Short et al. (2010).
To test hypothesis 2, we obtained statistics that point out the distribution of women and men in each occupation and occupation area. Based on such empirical evidence and recent statistics, a list was created distinguishing between gendered-occupation areas: Male-dominated occupation areas: Construction; Natural Resources; Engineering; and IT; Female-dominated occupations areas: Health-Care & Medical Service; Social Work; Meeting; Convention & Event Management; Education & Teaching; Administration and Office Support and Housekeeping; and gender-neutral occupation areas: Sales; Accounting; Business Management; and Marketing. Next, we compared such female-, male- and gender-neutral occupation areas with occupation categories on the job-search websites to validate correspondence. Starting with the job-searching website of entrepreneurship, Workinstartus.com, the following occupation areas are stated on that job-search website: Marketers; Designers; Managers; Consultants; Programmers; and Sales. Comparing such categories, it was recognizable, that the job categories are correspondent with gendered-occupations, but only with male-dominated and gender-neutral occupations. Not surprisingly, as entrepreneurship is understood as masculine, non female-dominated occupation area is mentioned under the main categories on the website. However, especially, the occupation
area of Health-Care is discusses as becoming very entrepreneurial as mentioned before (Jain & Tsang, 2014; Hixon, 2014). In contrast, comparing the job categories on the website of
Eurojobs.com, which offers jobs to all enterprises, many more categories were found: Accountancy; Administrative; Agriculture; Architectural Services; Arts & Entertainment;
Automotive; Banking; Biotech; Construction; Consulting; Customer Service; Design; Education; Energy; Engineering; Finance; Healthcare; Hospitality; Information Technology; Leisure; Logistics; Manufacturing; Marketing; Recruitment; Retail; Sales; Science; Telecommunication and Tourism. Thus, a high correspondence with the occupation categories of the website
Eurojobs.com and the all gendered-occupations were found. Although, the website of
Workinstartups.com did not give much room for female-dominated occupation areas, literature and recent discussions within the field of entrepreneurship ensure, that also female-dominant occupation exists in entrepreneurship. In sum, based on empirical evidence, the comparison between literature and the actual job categories on real job searching websites, the following distinguishing between gendered-occupation areas was applied within our work: Male-dominated occupation areas: Engineering; IT; Manufacturing; Female-Male-dominated occupation areas: Health-Care; Human Resource Management; Administrative Support (e.g. secretary); Gender-neutral occupation areas: Business Management; Marketing; Sales. Other gendered-occupations, which could not be referred to an entrepreneurship, were discarded for our research purpose. To examine the job advertisement towards gendered-occupation areas, a word list of words associated with certain occupation areas was created.
To test hypothesis 1 and hypothesis 2, the dictionaries were imported to LIWC, so that the software analyses the collected content of the job advertisements according to their wording based on the imported dictionaries.By testing hypothesis 1, the entire full-text of job
advertisements were analysed according the dictionaries, while only the job profession description was analysed on wording of the dictionary to test hypothesis 2 (Appendix C).
Dependent Variable
We created one dependent variable necessary for this study to test our hypothesis: the masculinity of job advertisement. This continuous variable measured the masculinity score of job advertisements. Thus the proportion of masculine words within a job advertisement determined the masculinity of that job advertisement. The length of job advertisements deviate in the amount of words, though. For example, the mean of the numbers of words in the main sample of
Workinstartups.com was 474, while the shortest job advertisements contained 95 words and the largest 1727 words. To control such deviation, LIWC standardized the masculine score by dividing the amount of entrepreneurial coded words of a job advertisement by the total amount of words of the specific job advertisements. In that way, masculinity of each job advertisement could be measured.
Independent Variable
The computer-assisted text analysis program LIWC, which was employed within this study, offers standardized dictionaries while also allowing the user to integrate customized dictionaries, based on the user’s research purposes. This feature was ideal for this study, so that any potential predictors could possibly be included into the dictionary in order to explore independent variables. To test hypothesis 1, the five entrepreneurial orientations of autonomy, competitive, aggressiveness, innovativeness, pro-activeness, and risk taking served as individual and independent constructs (Moss et al., 2014) as the independent variables. The same dictionary has been applied on former studies to gauge entrepreneurial language used in mission statements as well as entrepreneurial language used by chief executive officers in letters to shareholders
(Moss, et al., 2011). Each dimension was examined individually as the dimensions were conceptualized as independent constructs (Lumpkin & Dess, 1996). Such wording for each dimensions are do-it-yourself; on one’s own; and independent (Autonomy); creation, discovery and new (Innovation); exploration; forecast; and opportunity-seeking (Pro-activeness);
ambitious; engage; and challenger (Competitive aggressiveness) and adventurous; danger; and uncertain (Risk-taking). We also follow the recommendation to model the five dimensions as independent constructs when using content analysis as advised by former studies by Moss et al. (2011) and Covina and Wale (2012).
To test hypothesis 2, we added the independent variables of male-dominated occupation areas (e.g. Controller; Engineering; Industrial-engineer); female-dominated occupation areas (Healthcare, Hospital, secretary) and gender-neutral occupations areas (e.g. Advertising; Communication-manager).
Data Analyses
The data of this study was analysed with the statistical analysis program SPSS and Microsoft Office Excel. Before the hypotheses were tested, a preliminary analysis was
conducted. Here, normality and correlation of all variables were tested. Here for, descriptive and frequencies of all relevant items for further analyses were conducted per sample set.
To test hypothesis 1a, a bivariate correlation was performed to obtain the Pearson’s correlation coefficient of the masculinity and entrepreneurial orientation of job advertisements. Both samples were tested, in order to discover potential differences between the masculinity of entrepreneurial job advertisements and job advertisements of any enterprise. To test hypothesis 1b, a linear regression was conducted to summarize the relationship between the predictor’s variables, so the five dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation, and the outcome variable, the
masculinity of job advertisements. Also in this case, both samples were tested. The same linear regression analysis was completed to test hypothesis 2. Here the relationship between the predictive variables and the male-dominated occupations was tested by investigating to what extent male-dominated occupation areas affect the overall score of masculinity and
entrepreneurial orientation. To test hypothesis 2 further, a partial correlation was performed to test the strength and direction of the linear relationship between the continuous predictive variables of entrepreneurial orientation and masculinity of job advertisments whilst controlling for the effect of the variable of male-dominated occupation areas. Thus this additional analyse of the partial correlation shows whether the male-dominated occupation areas contribute to the masculinity score by affecting the individual dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation independently. Also for hypothesis 2, both sample sets were tested to discover assumed differences in outcomes.
Content Validity
This study follows a deductive approach and deductive approach of a content analysis requires certain theories to design a word lists for a valid coding (Short et al. 2010). In order to create a credible dictionary of word lists to measure the construct of interest, similar research studies about the topic of gendered-wording and entrepreneurial orientation were identified and reviewed. Therefore, an initial assessment of construct dimensionality could be proven.
Respecting masculine wording it was relied on former studies by Ahl (2006); Brannon & Juni (1984); Gaucher et al. (2011); and Hosoda and Stone (2000). In the case of entrepreneurial wording, we also relied on the existing word lists of the study by Short et al. (2010) as mentioned beforehand. But as Short et al. (2010) included additional words to their word list, we used a pre-test to pre-test the entrepreneurial wording manually ourselves, too. Thus, by selecting a random
sample set (N=100) of job advertisements of our sample of Workinstartups.com, the list of entrepreneurial words by Short et al. (2010) was tested ‘mechanically’ with LIWC and manually by us. Performing such a comparison predicted whether we, as the researcher, and the computer-assisted coding of LIWC collate in terms of coding. Here, we coded the job advertisements to the extent to which we agree or disagree with the statement if ‘the job advertisement is extremely entrepreneurial’ on a scale from one to five [1= strongly disagree; 5= strongly agree]. In fact, a significant moderate correlation between the mechanically and manually entrepreneurial score, r=0,681, could be found, which tells us that there is a correlation. But to support content validity even more, a stronger correlation would be beneficial.Therefore,in a second step, outliers were detected and analysed. Here, we compared our manually codes with the mechanical codes to discover potential inconsistencies in the coding scheme, by reanalysing the wording and re-comparing those to the wording list. In this case, a range of words was discovered to increase the entrepreneurial score of the mechanically coded job advertisements dramatically due to the high density of such words in certain job advertisements. However, by looking into those words, it was striking that not all of those frequently coded words corresponded to an entrepreneurial orientation. Based on that, the original list of entrepreneurial words has been adjusted by
discarding five words of the word list, which showed a significant increase of the entrepreneurial score coded mechanically, although those words do generally not support an entrepreneurial orientation: analysis, management, new, research and survey. To test the assumption, that those five words effect the content validity of this study, the same sample of the pre-test was coded with the adjusted dictionary of entrepreneurial words once more and showed off an increase in the significant correlation between the mechanically and manually entrepreneurial score, r=0,772. Thus after removing such wording, the correlation increased and supported content
validity to a fairly high moderate extent. To further test the content validity, we asked an external rater to code the same 100 job advertisements of the main sample set of Workinstartups.com to gain a second manually coding. The rater got introduced to the subject matter to understand the subject area and was also asked to rate the job advertisements due to the scale of one to five [1= strongly disagree; 5= strongly agree] according to the mentioned statements about the extent of the entrepreneurial level of job advertisement. To validate inter-rater reliability, the rater was asked to rate five job advertisement together with the researcher in order to detect and prove whether the researcher and the rater agree upon the rater’s understanding of the entrepreneurial level of job advertisement. Results confirmed a similar significant moderate correlation was conducted, r=0.794, which gave support for content validity.
To test hypothesis 2, a third word list of gendered-occupation areas is used. Also in this case, to prove initial assessment of construct dimensionality useful literature was identified and reviewed. In this matter of course, the study by Gaucher et al (2011) served as a baseline for our work, as their study suggests that male-dominated areas contain a higher proportion of masculine wording in job advertisements. Within our work, we also needed to distinguish between male-dominant, female-dominant and gender-neutral occupation areas in order to test whether the masculine wording in job advertisement is controlled by those predictors. Here fore, we first reviewed literature and statistics about occupational sex segregation to create a list of typical male-dominated -, female-dominated - and gender-neutral occupation areas. Further, we
compared the list with the categories about occupational areas given on the job search websites of our two sample (Workinstartups.com and Eurujobs.com) to discover correspondence.
However, on the website of Workinstartups.com, which offer only entrepreneurial job advertisements, a correspondence between the given job categories and female-dominated
occupation areas could not be found. However, based on literature, also female-dominated occupation areas such as Healthcare and Humane Resource Management take place in entrepreneurship (Jain & Tsang, 2014). Therefore, our final distinguishing between male-dominant, female-dominant and sex-neutral occupations areas were based on statistics of Statistics of Bureau of Labour of the United States Department of Labor (2015); dataset of the statistical federal state Europe (2012); and Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (2002) and based on literature of Jain and Tsang (2014); Heilman (1983); and Hull (2013). Next, a word list of male-dominant occupation areas, female-dominant occupation areas and gender-neutral occupation areas was created. Here, words describing the various occupation areas as well as word-families were collected. It was looked into job advertisements of the chosen job occupation areas to discover how certain occupation areas are linked to job positions or job titles. Based on that, the following occupational areas are described through following wording: The male dominated occupation areas of engineering, IT and manufacturing are described with wording such as engineering; mechanical-engineer; electrical-engineer; industrial-engineer (Engineering); information-technology; programmer; software-engineer; technical-support (IT); or manufactory or industrial-product-manager (Manufacturing). Further, words such as medical; therapist; healthcare (Health-Care); personal assistant; administrative-and-customer-service (Administration); HR; recruitment-consultant (HRM) describe female-dominated occupation areas and gender-neutral occupations are explained with words like manager; business-developer (Business Management); sales; accountant (Finance) or brand-manager; campaign-manager; or advertising (Marketing).The word list to test hypothesis 2 was imported to LIWC and was used to analyse the text under job profession type of the data (Appendix B).
In sum, creating individual word lists, multiply sources of evidence and chain of evidence were taken into consideration and could be proven so that this research relies on a deductive approach and the code schemes are based on priori-theory (Short, 2010).
External Validity
Electronic job advertisements were chosen to serve as narrative text for analysis as such text documents were particularly applicable to the measurement of wording in job recruitment messages. To ensure the fit between the research question and the narrative text, electronic job advertisements were selected from a job-search website specialized only on start-ups (Sample 1 = workinstartups.com), which support the purpose of this study of investigating the
entrepreneurial score of job advertisements within an entrepreneurial setting. A second sample (Sample 2 = Eurojobs.com) from a non-entrepreneurial setting was selected additionally to be able to replicate the findings of the different samples to compare findings and to gain additional insight into the research purpose, so as recommended by Short et al. (2010), that same
measurements and analyses on different samples possibly justify empirical generalization and replication.
Reliability
Generally, a great advantage of a content analysis is its ability in processing large samples with high speed and reliability (Short et al, 2010). The high level of reliability is ensured as the content analysis is applied in form of a computer-aided qualitative as content analysis done by human coders, especially due to the fact, that it is proven that mechanical word-counting
techniques are more accurate than human scoring (Short et al, 2010). Therefore, by using LIWC, coding was up-tempo, as multiply texts documents could be analysed in a short period of time. Normally, LIWC supports a more accurate and minimized potential errors from human coders
without any potential coders bias, which again enhances reliability. However, in our case, as examined before, we did a pre-test to justify the reliability of LIWC and only found a moderate correlation between manually and mechanically coding. Therefore, it may be doubtable whether LIWC is more accurate. But as a matter of facts, it is the case, that LIWC minimized potential errors from human coders as the system is not biased.
RESULTS
Preliminary Analysis
In order to prepare our data, the necessary assumptions were tested. First the linearity of the predictive variables was tested. Further, normality was checked by looking at kurtosis and skewness as well as the boxplot, which was screened to identify outliers and extreme cases. By gaining all descriptive and frequencies of the variables, it could be observed that not all variables a normal distributed. To gain certainty, and to see whether the distribution of scores deviates from the comparable normal distribution, we performed a Kolmogrov-Smirnov test, which compares our samples to a normally distributed set of scores. All variables were significantly non-normal for sample 1 and 2. According to the central limit theorem, as the sample size gets larger, the assumption of normality matters less due to the fact the sampling distribution will be normal regardless of what population (Field, 2012). Nonetheless, the data was transformed to combat problems with normality and linearity and to get closer to a normal distribution by using the square root transformation for both samples. To ensure validity all analysis used a robust test to violations of assumptions and outliers, so that all variables eventually were treated as they were distinct.
Table 1.1 Descriptive and Correlations SAMPLE 1
(N = 2744)
M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1. Masculine Wording 0,43 0,38 − 2. Entrepreneurial Wording 1,29 0,27 .578** − 3. Feminine Wording 0,37 0.31 .045 .112** − 4. Autonomy 0,50 0,13 .095* .211** −.126** − 5. Innovativeness 0,67 0,22 .272** .525** .028 .050 − 6. Proactiveness 0,20 0,27 .171** .349** .085* −.049 .044 − 7. Competitiveness 0,29 0,28 .279** .433** .086* .022 .062 .059 − 8. Risk_Taking 0,14 0,22 .246** .309** .156** −.118** .19 .25 .185** − 9. Male-Dominated Occupations 0,68 0,24 −.069 −.073* −.090* .103* −.063 −.072* −.039 −.005 − 10. Female Dominated Occupations 0,74 0,48 .064 0.63 .039 −.047 0105** .051 −.079* −.034 −.221** − 11. Gender-neutral Occupations 0,49 0,49 .038* −.023 .073* −.037 −.047 .045 .01 −.76* −.269** .199** -Note. ** p < .01, * p < .05, Bootstrap samples
based on 1000
Table 1.2 Descriptive and Correlations SAMPLE 2
(N= 812)
M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1. Masculine Wording 0,13 0,009 − 2.Entrepreneurial Wording 0,55 0,01 .400** − 3. Feminine Wording 0,37 0.31 .251** .422** − 4. Autonomy 0,06 0,006 .158** .387** .084* − 5. Innovativeness 0,16 0,01 .307** .607** .228** 0.80* − 6. Proactiveness 0,12 0,009 .250** .516** .262** .324** .177** − 7. Competitiveness 0,11 0,008 .163** .506** .239** .095** .151** .261** − 8. Risk_Taking 0.046 0,006 .157** .351** .123** .173** .114** .190** .126** − 9. Male Dominated Occupations 0,42 0,017 .079* .287** .283** .051 .187** .113** .135* .047 − 10. Female Dominated Occupations 0,53 0,018 .172** .325** .308* .052 .235** .153** .171** .093* * −.014 − 11. Gender-neutral Occupations 0,32 0,017 .187** .233** .077* .042 .167** .050 .054 .066 −.008 .187** − Note. ** p < .01, * p < .05, Bootstrap samples based on 1000Hypothesis Testing
Beginning with hypothesis 1a and recalling the subject matter, hypothesis 1a test the assumption that the field of entrepreneurship is masculine and that therefore job advertisements of companies within an entrepreneurial field show off a high proportion on masculine wording within their recruitment material.
To test hypothesis 1a, a correlation test was conducted in order to detect the correlation of entrepreneurial orientation and masculine wording within the two samples. For sample 1, a moderate significant relationship between masculine score and entrepreneurial orientation of job advertisements, r= .59, p = .00 and for sample 2, which presents a non-entrepreneurial sample, a slightly lower, but moderate significant relationship between those variables of sample 2, r = .400, p = .00 was observed. Thus hypothesis 1a is supported.
Table 2.1. Inter-correlations of EO and masculinity, SAMPLE 1 (N = 2744)
M SD 1 2
1. Masculine_Wording 0,43 0,38 −
2. Entrepreneurial_Wording 1,29 0,27 .590** −
Note. ** p < .01, * p < .05 ; Bootstrap was conducted, results are based on 1000 bootstrap samples
Table 2.2. Inter-correlations of EO and masculinity, SAMPLE 2 (N=867)
M SD 1 2
1. Masculine_Wording 0,13 0,26 −
2. Entrepreneurial_Wording 0,54 0,56 .400** −
Note. ** p < .01, * p < .05 ; Bootstrap was conducted, results are based on 1000 bootstrap samples
Further, we tested hypothesis 1b, by investigating the masculinity of job advertisements further by looking into the five various dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation and to what extent those dimensions predict the masculinity of job advertisements independently. By
performing a stepwise linear multiple regression and by testing the predictive validity for sample 1, it could be seen that every independent dimension of the five dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation are significantly correlated with the masculinity of job advertisements;
innovativeness, r = 0.264, p = .00; risk-taking r = ,245, p = .00; and pro-activeness; r = .171, p = .00; Competitive Advantage, r=.278, p = .00; and Autonomy, r = .095, p = .00 are all
significant and all predictors for the masculinity of job advertisements. Also the ANOVA shows the significance of those predictors once more. The summary of the model showed that five regression models were run to inspect the significant predictors. With R² = .208, all predictors were account for only 20,8 per cent of the variation in the masculine score of job advertisements. Requesting the Durbin-Watson statistic, additionally, it could be examined that the assumption of independent errors is tenable was met (Durbin-Watson = 1.916). Further, the dimension of
Competitive-aggressiveness and Innovativeness show the higher contribution on the masculinity of job advertisements.
Looking into the sample set of a non-entrepreneurial setting, sample 2 also shows that all dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation predict the masculinity of job advertisements.
Innovativeness, r = .309, p = .00; and Pro-activeness, r = .255, p = .00 show the highest contribution, whereas the other dimensions show a lower contribution,
competitive-aggressiveness r = .164, p = .00; risk-taking r = .151, p = .00; and Autonomy, r = .144, p = .00. However, the dimension of Autonomy was not counted. Also in this case, ANOVA showed off a significant level, p = .00. But considering the Durbin-Watson statistic, it was examined that the assumption of independent errors is not as tenable met as with sample 1, as the score is further away of an optimal score of 2 (Durbin-Watson = 1.559)
In conclusion, the entrepreneurial orientation’s dimension of Competitive-aggressiveness and Innovativeness has the strongest unique affect on masculine wording in job advertisements in sample 1; and for sample 2, competitive aggressiveness has the strongest affect on the masculinity score. Therefore, respecting sample 1, hypothesis 1b was supported for all the five entrepreneurial orientation’s dimension. For sample 2, all dimensions except of the dimension of Autonomy were significant. Thus, job advertisements, whether of an entrepreneurial or non-entrepreneurial setting, when signalling non-entrepreneurial orientations are signalling a certain degree of masculinity, too. The dimensions of innovativeness and competitive-aggressiveness show the highest effect on the masculinity of job advertisements.
