Foreign accents hurt women's job prospects: study

CANBERRA -- A new study from the Australian National University (ANU) has found that women with foreign accents are perceived as less employable, while men are unaffected by linguistic background.

Published in the Australian Journal of Linguistics on Tuesday, the study highlights a "double disadvantage" faced by non-native English-speaking women in the job market. It found that Anglo women were rated the most employable, while Russian-speaking women received the lowest ratings.

To examine language-based discrimination in Australia, researchers conducted an experiment with 153 native English-speaking participants, mostly tertiary-educated professionals. Listeners rated audio clips from 30 speakers representing different linguistic backgrounds, including native English speakers of Anglo, Cantonese, and Lebanese descent, as well as second-language English speakers whose first language was Mandarin or Russian.

Speakers were assessed on a five-point employability scale. While men's ratings remained consistent across backgrounds, women with foreign accents were judged significantly less employable.

Co-author Prof. Catherine Travis emphasized the importance of controlling for individual speaker differences, noting that many perception studies focus solely on male voices, potentially overlooking gendered biases.

Lead author Ksenia Gnevsheva pointed out that Australia, like many countries, lacks legislation against accent discrimination, which can serve as a proxy for other forms of bias.

The researchers called for anti-discrimination training in Human Resources and across all business sectors to foster workplace diversity and inclusion.