Gender Neutral Recruitment Guidelines

Gender neutral recruitment is the practice of setting aside the gender of applicants when hiring staff in order to:

• address gendered biases and unconscious bias in recruitment, and
• increase the number of women in leadership and in male-dominated industries.

For many years increasing women’s participation in employment has been argued as a matter of equality and the ‘right’ thing to do. Today women’s full participation in employment is argued on the basis of economics — it is now the ‘smart’ thing to do.

The Office for Women developed these guidelines to help organisations to identify ways they can increase the number of women in senior positions through gender neutral recruitment.

The Guidelines for Gender Neutral Recruitment (PDF 771.9 KB) outline a number of techniques that can be put into practice to work towards gender neutral recruitment.