Discriminatory practices in UAE job listings are rare. But can they be stamped out?

With about 200,000 people moving to the UAE every year, job seekers could outnumber available roles. Victor Besa / The National

Recruitment posts that cross fair language guidelines often hide in plain sight.

Take a recent classified advertisement that sought an “office boy” and stated a preference for applicants from a particular country. Then there was the company that stipulated age ranges in their job posting or the listing by an employer who sought applicants from a single state in a specific country. The examples listed have all appeared in the past few weeks.

In each case, these are near blink-and-you’ll-miss-them transgressions that can cause distress and stir anger, but they often crop up, despite a strong regulatory framework being in place to prevent them. Article 4 of the UAE Labour Law prohibits “discrimination on the basis of gender, race, colour, sex, religion, national or social origin or disability”. Officials have also previously told The National that “prejudicial discrimination has no place in the conditions of employment, nor in wider society”, leaving little room for doubt about what is fair usage and what is not.

Several years ago, this news organisation reported on the case of the children’s nursery that sought to employ teachers of “European origin and white skin”. The story drew a great deal of attention and comment, and the entity subsequently removed the job post, which had initially appeared on social media. Years before that, we reported on a listing for a receptionist that said only applicants from a small basket of specific countries need apply and, in addition, listed gender and appearance requirements for interested candidates. It drew similar ire.

With the luxury of hindsight, we can see these are two extreme examples that are less likely to occur nowadays, but other micro-transgressions do crop up with regular cadence, as the examples listed earlier illustrate.

While most of us will feel uncomfortable when we bump up against such practices and recognise them for what they are, we may be left wondering why they persist.

One reason is that some market conditions may end up unwittingly prompting wrongful prescriptiveness rather than preventing it.

The National reported this month that hiring activity had increased in the third quarter of this year across the country and with about 200,000 people moving to the UAE every year, job seekers could outnumber available roles.

Those people arrive in a country with an already extremely diverse population and employment landscape, with residents originating from almost every point on the planet, essentially offering employers maximum choice. Given the relative abundance of candidates competing for a finite number of roles, we may see employers becoming more specific in requirements for a position, which may in turn lead to listings that breach regulations.

Recruitment ads are unlikely to ever become truly bias free

Another part of the problem is that the examples here are only what we can see and recognise as being wrong.

Other more subtle infractions might be at work in the vernacular language of recruitment postings, such as references to candidates needing to be multi-taskers and self-starters, being able to work well under pressure or be technologically native. A piece in the Financial Times earlier this year pointed out these are “red flags that frame troublesome workplace features as positive” and said the use of these terms was increasing in frequency in postings.

Crucially, they don’t constitute bad practice but may be harbingers of it. A hard-baked cynical contrarian may say that much of the language used in those seemingly problematic ads is “real-world shorthand” for conveying the details of an organisation’s prevailing culture and not challenging at all.

However, a recent academic study published in the Journal of Labour and Economy used text from more than 10,000 job listings globally to conclude that job ads that use either subtle or overt discriminatory language are key indicators of discrimination in practice.

By far the simplest way to tackle the issue is for platforms to take down or fix ads at source. Intervention and education at ground level is almost always preferable to relying solely on formal regulation. The storm kicked up by the nursery advert several years ago, for instance, was settled by corrective action after platform users and readers had reacted so strongly to what they had seen. That is a powerful argument in favour of informal policing of this space.

Big tech may also hold the key. The great promise of artificial intelligence could help turn the tide, allowing for accurate, fast analysis of postings and to advance and articulate evidence-based responses to the issue. Naturally, large language models will need to recognise bias when they see it.

Employers should also work to filter out that red-flag language and take the time to understand why certain terms may be problematic.

Prospective employees should take heed, too. The digital age has democratised job application processes with one-click submissions making it easier than ever before to knock on hundreds of doors simultaneously, but that doesn’t mean you should. Time spent reading between the lines of what something says, and decoding what it means, is rarely a bad investment.

In practice, companies will always hire who they want, meaning recruitment ads are unlikely to ever become truly bias free – humans rarely are in anything we do – but all parties have a role to play in seeking to make the landscape as equitable as possible.