The government thinks the word “competitive” is the problem

There was a time when governments concerned themselves with productivity, investment and economic growth. Today, apparently, they edit adjectives.

Last week ministers issued guidance advising employers to remove “stereotypically male” language from job adverts. Words such as “competitive”, “dominant”, or “ambitious” are now deemed suspect. The theory is that such language discourages women from applying for roles and therefore contributes to workplace inequality. Remove the offending vocabulary, the thinking goes, and the labour market will become more inclusive.

The guidance sits within a broader package of equality measures linked to gender pay gap reporting and workplace inclusion plans. From April, large employers will be encouraged to review job descriptions and recruitment practices. Under the Employment Rights Act the approach is expected to become mandatory by 2027.

Yet buried in the government’s own guidance is a revealing admission. There is, it notes, no known evidence that changing such language directly affects application rates. At most, some studies suggest the wording may make jobs appear “less appealing” to certain applicants.

That distinction matters. It highlights the increasingly common technocratic error in modern policymaking: confusing a psychological hypothesis with a labour-market reality.

Most people do not decide whether to apply for a job based on the adjectives in the advert. They look at the salary, the location, the working hours, the career prospects and the industry itself. Anyone who has ever participated in hiring knows this instinctively. If language were truly decisive, the problem of occupational imbalance would have been solved years ago by corporate HR departments.

Instead, the state has chosen the most superficial variable in the entire hiring process.

The assumption underpinning the policy is also strikingly patronising. The guidance implies that women may see words such as “competitive” and conclude that the environment is male-dominated and therefore unsuitable. But competition is not a masculine trait. It is a feature of professional life.

Entrepreneurs compete. Lawyers compete. Academics compete. So do athletes, politicians and journalists. Suggesting that women require softened vocabulary before entering such arenas risks implying precisely the stereotype the policy claims to oppose.

Critics of the guidance have made this point bluntly. Claire Coutinho, the shadow equalities minister, described the advice as “patronising gibberish”. One does not need to share her politics to recognise the underlying concern. When the state begins telling employers that words like “ambitious” or “entrepreneurial” may be too masculine, the equality agenda begins to resemble linguistic engineering.

Nor is this merely cultural symbolism. Such initiatives rarely stop at guidance. They are typically followed by audits, reporting frameworks, training programmes and compliance metrics. What begins as a suggestion soon becomes another layer of bureaucratic oversight.

For employers, the result is familiar: more forms to complete, more data to collect, more consultants to hire, and more meetings to discuss language rather than outcomes.

Meanwhile the structural forces that genuinely shape labour markets remain largely untouched. Occupational differences between men and women are driven by a mixture of factors including working hours, risk tolerance, childcare patterns and career interruptions. Economists have debated these dynamics for decades. None of them hinge on the presence of the word “competitive” in a job advert.

Indeed the article itself reveals that many HR professionals are sceptical. In a survey cited by People Management, three quarters of respondents said removing so-called masculine language would not encourage more women to apply.

That scepticism reflects practical experience. Recruiters know that the most effective way to widen applicant pools is not linguistic revision but tangible change: clearer salary ranges, flexible working arrangements and credible career progression.

There is a broader cultural story here as well. Increasingly, modern governance treats language reform as social reform. If the correct terminology can be identified, society itself can supposedly be recalibrated.

The impulse is understandable. Editing words is far easier than fixing complex economic systems. But it carries a deeper risk. By focusing obsessively on language, policymakers begin to substitute symbolism for substance.

Britain’s labour market faces serious challenges: weak productivity, skills shortages, demographic pressures and stagnant growth. Against that backdrop, a government effort to sanitise job advert vocabulary looks less like reform and more like displacement activity.

If ministers genuinely want to expand opportunity, they might start with the fundamentals that shape working lives. Until then, employers are being asked to believe that the path to economic equality runs through the removal of a few unfashionable adjectives.

Whitehall, it seems, has discovered a new lever of economic policy.

The thesaurus.