EQUALITY GUIdE - KU Leuven

Chapter 2 ! Career paths: recruitment ! promotion ! dismissal 97
vacancy. The foregoing has already showed that no consensus has yet been reached in
the debate on neutralization or differentiation. Consequently, implicit discrimination in
language remains possible. While the French-speaking Community decided on 21
June 1993 that all job titles should be feminized, the Flemish Community stated that
the Language Union (de Taalunie) -rather than the government- had to make a decision
in the matter. Because the gender issue concerning the Dutch-language vacancies
is especially related to the labour market in Flanders and the Netherlands, a joined
decision was made by the committee of ministers of the Language Union on 22 October
1996. They stated that there would be no compulsory feminization of the Dutchlanguage
job titles. The members of the Language Union believe that language follows
social evolutions spontaneously and that the language users can rarely be forced to
change their everyday language. According to the Language Union, the language users
will benefit more from well-organized sensitization that will help the neutral form to lose
its male connotation in time.
3.2.3. Vacancy text
A vacancy can be perceived as a text consisting of two parts. Whereas the first part
consists solely of the job title, the second part comprises the actual text, specifying the
profile and the competences of the candidates, as well as giving more information
about the position in question. Even when using a gender-neutral job title, the vacancy
may seem to focus on men rather than women (or vice versa) by the way candidates
are addressed or by the job description.
The first problem concerns the use of unmarked masculine job titles, because the form
of address that is used may give a text unintentionally a masculine character (e.g. ‘Van
de expert (m/v) wordt verwacht dat hij zijn dossiers snel behandelt’ [The expert (m/f)
has to make sure that he deals with his documents swiftly]). The use of ‘he/she’ and
‘his/her’ would unnecessarily overload the text. The possessive pronouns should be
replaced by an article (the documents). By addressing the candidates with ‘you’ (in
Dutch one can use ‘jij’ or the more formal ‘u’), one can avoid the use of a gender-specific
pronoun (e.g. ‘Er wordt verwacht dat u uw dossiers snel behandelt’ [As an expert
you have to make sure you deal with your documents swiftly]). A second solution is
the use of plurals (e.g. ‘Van experts wordt verwacht dat zij hun dossiers snel behandelen’
[Experts are expected to deal with their documents swiftly]).
The second problem refers to the requirements (profile, competences) the candidates
have to meet. It is now generally recognized that most women only tend to apply for a
position when they meet the majority of the requirements. Consequently, a long list of
high demands would indirectly exclude potential female candidates 109 . Furthermore,
there is evidence to suggest that men and women tend to be attracted to different aspects
of requirements or working conditions. For instance, more women than men will
109 Dienst Emancipatiezaken, Genderneutrale functiebenamingen:
http://www.emancipatiezaken.be/page.asp?page=3.