TRANSCRIPT
Maria — whose real name and voice are disguised to protect her identity — started working in the finance sector when she arrived in Australia about a decade ago.
She completed a bachelor's degree in her home country, Russia, along with a master's degree in Australia.
Now in a contract role, she's undertaking further study.
"I was comfortable in my back-office role, helping other professionals with their plans and their services. Then I realised that I can be a professional within my career journey as well and I decided to take on that step to progress further. But then I faced some difficulties."
Maria says some of those challenges include language barriers and use of jargon.
But she also says she faces questions from employers about how long she's been working in her field, and is left to speculate when an application stalls.
"They're not progressing further with my application. So, I get the first interview and then recruiters are either not replying to my emails or my calls. I'm not sure what's going on with my application and I just disappear. I don't have any feedback, I don't know what's going on. Is it because of my career gap? Is it because of my confidence level?"
Maria wonders whether her accent is among the factors, including confidence and experience, that might be affecting her career progression.
"The main challenge - and this is the perception that people have when they're talking to me - it seems that my accent somehow affects my position. People tend to underestimate me. Then it affects my confidence, then the confidence that I have already affects my vocabulary that I hold in my head. So, I don't seem as professional to people."
A new study suggests women with foreign accents are seen as less employable than men and non-foreign-accented speakers more broadly.
The researchers from the Australian National University point to a "double disadvantage" that some women face.
Lead author and senior lecturer in linguistics, Dr Ksenia Gnevsheva, explains.
"We find a gender-based disadvantage of men versus women, and there's also a general disadvantage of foreign-accented versus non-foreign-accented speakers. When you put these together —when you look at foreign-accented women — this is a double disadvantage, highlighting their minority status, and drawing these negative ratings."
Australia is a linguistically diverse country, with almost one quarter of the population speaking a language other than English at home, according to the 2021 Census.
Language-based discrimination is often less-reported than that of race or religion, but has been "robustly" demonstrated in some research, the study says.
Its findings hinge on a perception experiment that uses audio clips of 30 speakers from five groups: native English speakers from Anglo, Cantonese and Lebanese backgrounds, along with second-language English speakers whose first language is Mandarin or Russian.
Clips were randomly presented to a group of 153 listeners, who then rated the speakers on a five-point scale of employability.
Dr Gnevsheva says while linguistic background affected female speakers, it had no discernible effect for males.
"We found that accent played a role, but not just accent by itself. We found that for the male speakers in our study, the accent didn't matter. The listeners found them as equally employable, irrespective of their background. But for women it did."
Based on the scope of the survey, Anglo women were rated as the most employable, and second-language English-speaking women, such as Russian speakers, the least.
The ANU researchers say those findings expose the very real potential for language-based discrimination in Australia.
It's unlawful to discriminate based on age, disability, race, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation in areas including education and employment.
But laws in most Western countries — including Australia — do not extend to discrimination based on accent, whether race or class-based.
Dr Gnevsheva says it can also become a "proxy" for other forms of discrimination.
"At another level, being aware of potential for such discrimination is very important in hiring decisions. HR professionals and really anybody in the workforce should be trained in should undergo anti-bias training so that people coming from different backgrounds can work together more efficiently."
