A Tool for Creating Inclusive (and Exclusive) Content

💔 An Idea I Didn’t Date

This is a post from Ideas I Didn’t Date, a paid subscriber-only series where I share promising ideas for projects, products, businesses and art that I’ve chosen not to partner with. Maybe they’re made for you instead. Learn more about this series →

WHEN I WAS recruiting employees for my startup, I used a web platform everyone was raving about called Applied. It lets candidates apply for jobs anonymously, which Applied's research¹ has shown results in fairer hiring and better role-fit.

One of the things the Applied platform does is analyse the job descriptions you write and highlights all the masculine- and feminine-coded words. It then suggests alternatives so the text can be more gender-balanced.

Outside the world of recruitment, I think this gender-balancing feature could be built into Word, Docs, Evernote or whatever tool writers use to create their work. Not all writers would want it, obviously. But some would, and it could be a vital tool they use to help them communicate in the way they want and make their work more inclusive.

Or more exclusive. It could be mishandled, of course, just like any tool.

But sticking with the potential benefits, it's interesting to think about the different ways a tool like this could benefit writers, particularly online writers: