Management job ads: The implication of linguistic choices for the recruitment of female executives

The article asks whether it is not the responsibility of corporations to address the issue of women being underrepresented in Danish management jobs. In other words, it is argued that corporations should be encouraged to engage more actively in the recruitment of both men and women for management jobs by discursively constructing job ads that appeal to both sexes. This argument is part of the broader field of corporate social responsibility, corporate citizenship, and stakeholder management, which involves discussions of the obligations of corporations to acknowledge and mitigate the increasingly widespread impact that their activities have on communities and social structures.

The article emphasises the need for more active engagement on the part of corporations by analysing the discursive construction of preferred candidates in a small sample of Danish management job ads. By means of Critical Discourse Analysis (e.g. Baxter 2003; Fairclough 1992, 1995, 2003; Holmes 2006; Phillips and Hardy 2002), it is demonstrated that across sectors and across senior-management positions, there is widespread agreement on what constitutes the ideal candidate. Furthermore, it is argued that this agreement reflects a high degree of conservatism in the system where men enjoy a considerable advantage and where procedures that ensure male dominance are perpetuated even in the linguistic and discursive construction of job ads.