“I decided to conduct an experiment. So, my name is Yaroslav"

The Russian woman could not find a job and began sending out resumes on behalf of the man. Companies immediately took notice of her

Ekaterina Shestak sent out resumes for several months for vacancies that matched her experience, but received no responses. As an experiment, she created a new resume - on behalf of a man. And she immediately began to receive responses - despite the fact that less experience was indicated in the “male” resume. Ekaterina told Vorstka why she conducted such an experiment, what conclusions she came to, and what the behavior of companies says about Russian society.

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“It is hardwired into the public consciousness that a female leader is a harmful hysterical person”

My name is Ekaterina, I am 43 years old. I have two higher educations - legal and philological, I am an experienced manager, I have worked in consulting, in transport and logistics companies, in an international publishing house.

Since December 2022, I have been looking for a new job: I sent out resumes and responded to vacancies. First of all, I was interested in leadership positions that would match my experience and qualifications. But the response on recruiting sites was very bad, and I didn’t understand why .

I decided to conduct an experiment: make a “male” resume and see what happens. So, my name is Yaroslav, I’m 39 years old, I’m goal-oriented, stress-resistant, and have leadership qualities.

I copied Yaroslav’s work experience from my real resume, reducing the duration of work in each company by a year - after all, Yaroslav is younger than me.

Yaroslav, like me, speaks English and French. Only in my resume this is confirmed by a diploma, but in Yaroslav’s it is not, because I was too lazy to fill out the field about my second higher education.

When I published Yaroslav’s resume on recruiting sites, a miracle happened. If almost no one even opened my real “female” resume, then Yaroslav’s resume on the very first day received as many views as I had in a week . Yaroslav began to be invited to interviews.

Sometimes he was refused. But even Yaroslav and I received different refusals from the same company. When I responded to a vacancy at Sberbank, they wrote to me, Ekaterina: “Thank you for your interest, but now we are not ready to offer you this particular position.” Yaroslav was told: “Recruitment for this position has now been suspended, but we have added your resume to the database of the best candidates.”

I especially liked how the Moscow government reacted to Yaroslav - they very persistently wrote in messengers, called, sent SMS. They simply sent a refusal to Catherine.

When a female recruiter from the Moscow government began actively writing to Yaroslav, I asked her: “I received two resumes, women and men, they are identical. Why does a woman refuse, but a man does not?” She replied that irrelevant resumes are rejected. But I just copied Ekaterina’s experience and functionality and pasted it into Yaroslav’s resume!

Yes, Ekaterina is a little older than Yaroslav, but the difference is small. Moreover, she has two higher educations, while Yaroslav has only one.

I can't explain why this happens. Perhaps it is hardwired into the public consciousness that a female leader is a harmful hysterical, and a man is a wise boss. By the way, the image of a female leader is often ridiculed in culture . Take, for example, the Soviet film “Office Romance.” There is a female leader there - poorly dressed, uninteresting, quarrelsome.

As soon as she is preened, she becomes, as it were, better in every way. But initially, the very image of a woman leader in our country is, as a rule, negative. It is associated with many stereotypes: for example, about the “snake collective”, about “hysterical women” who have PMS and who cannot make effective decisions and depend on emotions.

“We ourselves prefer low-paid jobs, because we don’t need money”

I wrote a post on Facebook about my experiment with Yaroslav’s resume, and a discussion began in the comments. Many men wrote that in fact, nothing prevents women from becoming leaders, “they just don’t want to.” I don’t even know how to argue with this, I have no words. Of course, we don’t want this and prefer low-paid jobs, because we don’t need money at all. Lead us, guys!

Of course, someone wrote that “men and women are different by nature,” and also that “in men, testosterone has a bad effect on perseverance.” This is supposedly why men and women need different jobs. Some are more dynamic, others are calm.

Then why are 80% of accounting department employees women, and more often men go into IT? After all, both are quiet work that requires perseverance. Only in one profession the salaries are small, and in the other - not. For some reason, testosterone does not interfere with male concentration when it comes to making big money .

They also wrote to me that men have a shorter life expectancy, which means fewer opportunities. But “evil women squeeze men” and do not give them these opportunities to use. Moreover, the last of their pants are removed during a divorce. Well, this is just funny.
Readers also tried to explain to me that women managers themselves prefer to hire men. I don’t argue that misogyny is quite common, especially among older women. I myself have often heard from managers that they want to find a man for a vacant position because “men are better.” But there is nothing surprising here. We all - and these leaders too - are in a patriarchal system . And in it, many are accustomed to choosing strategies that help them adapt and survive.

Let's be straight forward. It feels like the woman is hated. If a potential employee is a young woman, then, in the employer’s opinion, she will definitely go on maternity leave. If “old,” then she’s senile.

No matter how a woman behaves, no matter what she is, she is still bad. If a housewife is a slob, if a careerist is a lying, unprincipled piece of trash. Even from the reaction to my post it is clear: a woman is not forgiven for any mistakes, and a man has the right to have shortcomings.

Neither your qualifications nor education matters. Only the structure of the genital organs and the beard . And no matter what the readers of my Facebook tell me, I am sure: often women applying for leadership positions are eliminated at the resume stage.

At the same time, I cannot, for example, sue employers for preferring male applicants. After all, it is impossible to prove that I receive refusals based on gender. And we don’t have the practice of going to court with such cases. To win, you need to pay a lawyer. One court costs 70 thousand rubles. Typically, women who are actively looking for work do not have that kind of money.

Readers named another probable reason for Yaroslav’s success - his age. Like, if an applicant is over 40, this greatly affects his prospects, and even a couple of years here can be significant. The other day I redid my resume. Now Yaroslav and Ekaterina are the same age, and I plan to continue the experiment.

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“Women ask for less money for their work”

I myself, as a manager, usually hired women. Not because I wanted to discriminate against men. It's just that during interviews the difference between them is too obvious.

A boy with little work experience comes and asks: “Give me a two hundred thousand salary.” I ask him a basic question about customs law, and he avoids answering and starts telling me that everything in my department is not working correctly and for 200 thousand he will help me fix everything.

A woman comes to the same position and asks for four times less money. At the same time, she has serious experience and has worked in reputable companies.

But many times I have heard other managers or recruiters say: “Let’s hire a boy!” Because male employees are considered more personable and have a supposedly more positive image .

Once there was a completely comical situation. At the end of 2022, I interviewed at the Tashkent office of the UNDP (United Nations Development Program - editor's note) for the vacancy of a project manager for the development of women's leadership in Central Asia and the Caucasus.

I was refused, and I was sure: a woman from Uzbekistan was hired for this position because she knows the specifics of the region and understands issues of gender equality in Uzbekistan better than any Russian woman. But then it turned out: the position was taken by a man who had previously worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Uzbekistan - it seems, in one of the European consulates. That is, he was not even close to the issues of women's leadership and equality.

At the same time, many believe that gender quotas are unnecessary, that they “humiliate” women, and that introducing quotas means looking for personnel based on gender. And now they are looking for him not based on gender?

Of course, many people do not want to notice these problems. To do this, you need appropriate life experience and views - exactly what is commonly called femoptics. I myself purchased these optics after surviving domestic violence.

Ten years ago, when I was married, my husband constantly reproached me - he said that I was too obsessed with my career and did not take care of my family, and cultivated a feeling of guilt for the fact that I was “not the keeper of the hearth.”

Then my children were born, and the company I worked for left the Russian market. I decided: well, I’ll do “women’s” things, please and inspire my husband. The result was disastrous. Without my own income, with small children in my arms, I turned out to be a suitable object for violence and humiliation . I had to run away from my own apartment at home into rented housing and continue to raise my children alone.

This difficult story taught me a lot. I began to notice how roles in the world are distributed between men and women. How women ask for less money, often doing more work. How they are expected to work unnoticed in secondary roles and are not seen as professionals, leaders and strong personalities. I think it’s time to think about your own business - because hiring practices will not change soon, and my children and I need something to eat.

Cover illustration: Dmitry Osinnikov

Editorial "Layout"