Gendered Wording In Fintech Recruitment: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Goto Financial’s Acceleration Program
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24256/ideas.v14i2.12059Keywords:
Critical Discourse Analysis, fintech recruitment, gendered wording, masculine-coded language, feminine-coded languageAbstract
Gendered wording in job advertisements can contribute to the construction of professional identities by associating occupational competence with masculine- or feminine-coded attributes. Although gendered language in recruitment has received considerable scholarly attention, its realization in Indonesian fintech recruitment discourse remains underexplored, particularly in specialized career-track programs. This study examines masculine- and feminine-coded lexical patterns in the Lending Risk Analyst Acceleration Program advertised by GoTo Financial on LinkedIn in April 2026 and investigates how these patterns construct the ideal professional candidate. Using a descriptive qualitative approach, the study applies Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework of Critical Discourse Analysis, supported by Social Role Theory, and framework of gendered wording, which distinguishes agentic (masculine-coded) from communal (feminine-coded) language. The analysis identified 20 unique gender-coded lexical types (comprising 15 agentic and 5 communal types, with a total of 29 occurrences/tokens across the text), in which masculine-coded expressions such as “driven”, “leads”, and “ownership” predominantly frame professional competence in terms of initiative, authority, achievement, and individual responsibility, whereas feminine-coded expressions such as “support”, “collaborate”, and “contribute” occur primarily in contexts of teamwork and relational interaction. At the discourse-practice level, this distribution discursively highlights the image of the ideal candidate, characterised by high performance and personal initiative. At the sociocultural level, the pattern indicates a tension between masculine-coded professional expectations and GoTo Group’s publicly communicated corporate discourse of inclusivity. Ultimately, by integrating gendered-wording analysis with Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework, this study demonstrates how moving from lexical identification toward institutional and sociocultural interpretation can uncover the complex discursive mechanisms underlying inclusive recruitment communication.
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