Articles

Why Women Pass More Background Screening Checks Than Men

By Himshikha Shukla

September 30, 2020

Background screening checks are an important part of any hiring process because they help employers ensure that potential hires have the experience, education, and expertise they claim to have. That way, they can hire the right talents that will help their businesses thrive. Over the years, it’s well-known that women are more likely to pass background screening checks than men. This post explores why this is the case.

Understanding the Nature of Background Checks

Screening checks are carried out to discover anomalies in the applications of applicants. These anomalies may include lies told about education and experience levels. Moreover, these checks help to ensure that a candidate will preserve workplace safety. So, in summary, screening checks are used to weed out dishonest individuals and those that can potentially threaten workplace safety. 

The CV Dilemma

To meet up to the fierce competition, many job applicants lie or embellish the truth in their CVs – about 50 percent to be precise. However, it’s surprising to find out that men are 6% more likely to lie on their resume than women. Many scientific studies have further shown that men lie more than women and even feel less guilty about it. 

In terms of job applications, men feel pressured to get jobs because of higher societal expectations. Coupled with an innate drive to climb up the pecking order, men are more compelled to tell lies just to get ahead of the game. It is, however, important to note that women tell lies too, but men do so more often. 

If men tell more lies, it’s only logical that men will be caught more often during background screening checks, all other things being equal. 

Criminal History

Employers want to maintain workplace safety and that’s why they carry out criminal history checks on prospective hires to find out about their criminal past. In terms of crimes, men are more likely to be criminals than women.

Males continue to comprise the majority of the Australian prisoner population (92 % of total prisoners). Furthermore, female sex offenders are very rare, with males taking the majority. Also, men have a higher recidivism rate compared to females, meaning men are more likely to be repeat offenders. 

Again, this can be explained from a biological perspective. Higher testosterone has been linked to aggressiveness and it partly explains why men tend to break the law more often than females. Therefore, more men have criminal records compared to females. 

Since this is the case, it is possible that national police checks like those that can be obtained online from australian national character check australia may be deemed more likely to turn up more negative criminal past for men than women. As a result, women are more likely to pass criminal history checks. 

Other Checks 

Even for many other facets of background checks, men are more likely to fail. Men are more likely to engage in financial fraud, have DUI charges, be drug addicts, and more. Hence, it’s easier to see how women pass background checks than men.