Do women only apply when they are 100% qualified, whereas men already apply when they are 60% qualified?

Abstract

We tested the popular claim that women only apply for jobs when they are 100% qualified, whereas men apply already with as little as a 60% qualification fit. In Study 1, we presented a job advertisement and a CV with different levels of qualification fit. Participants were asked to imagine that the presented CV was their own and to indicate whether they would apply for the advertised job. No gender difference emerged in participants’ application intentions, neither at 60% nor at 100% qualification fit. To enhance personal involvement, in Studies 2-4 we presented a job advertisement and asked participants to indicate whether they themselves would apply for the advertised job. Afterwards, participants indicated for every qualification criterion listed in the job advertisement whether they fulfilled it or not. We found a significant, but not robust gender difference in the predicted direction in the relationship between application intention and qualification fit. In addition, when asking how much women and men wanted to be prepared in application situations, women robustly indicated a higher desire for preparedness than men. Overall, our results indicate that for women psychological hurdles (i.e., desire for preparedness, fears and other gender-relevant indicators assessed) are higher in application situations than for men. However, these do not seem to translate reliably into differential application intentions in the experimental paradigms used in our studies. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.