[co-authored with Klarita Gërxhani and Arnout van de Rijt]

It has repeatedly been found that gender-inclusive language (GIL) increases women’s interest in and hypothetical intention of applying for a masculine-typed job. But does this have an implication for behaviour? Ample research indicates a positive effect of GIL on attitudes and preferences for women toward masculine-typed jobs. There is an underlying assumption that this has real world implications as these attitudes carry over into behaviour. However, the current research on GIL and interest in and application to masculine-typed jobs does not test this. Individuals might have a preference for GIL, but they might not forgo a job opportunity for it, or have their productivity be affected by it. We focus on GIL as a potential tool to increase the quantity as well as quality of female labour supply. We ran a field experiment on Prolific (in Germany and Italy, n = 1,321) to test whether the use of GIL in the advertisement of a task in a male-typed domain impacts actual behaviour in terms of application and performance. We used Prolific as an experimental labour market, where sign-up for our advertised study itself is an outcome variable. We find no effect of GIL on the share of women nor on the performance of women.