Gender fair strategies in job advertisements in Italy: a first update on the current situation

Abstract

This research aims to examine the use of gender-fair language in job advertisements within the contemporary Italian job market. The study is based on a sample of 240 job announcements collected online in 2024, with results compared to those of previous research and analyzed using corpus linguistics tools. The findings will confirm the predominance of neutralizing strategies and masculine forms, while revealing a slight increase in the use of split forms and the emergence of non-binary language, such as neomorphemes. This trend underscores the persistence of linguistic asymmetries in job announcements: problematic gender-related linguistic strategies may contribute to maintaining access barriers to specific segments of the labor market for women and to the overall persistence of social and cultural stereotypes.