Gender Bias and Sexism in Language

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication

Gender Bias and Sexism in Language  
Michela Menegatti and Monica Rubini
Subject: Critical/Cultural Studies , Gender (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies),
Intergroup Communication
Online Publication Date: Sep 2017 DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.470

Summary and Keywords

Language is one of the most powerful means through which sexism and gender
discrimination are perpetrated and reproduced. The content of gender stereotypes,
according to which women should display communal/warmth traits and men should
display agentic/competence traits, is reflected in the lexical choices of everyday
communication. As a consequence, language subtly reproduces the societal asymmetries
of status and power in favor of men, which are attached to the corresponding social roles.
Moreover, the hidden yet consensual norm according to which the prototypical human
being is male is embedded in the structure of many languages. Grammatical and
syntactical rules are built in a way that feminine terms usually derive from the
corresponding masculine form. Similarly, masculine nouns and pronouns are often used
with a generic function to refer to both men and women. However, such linguistic forms
have the negative effects of making women disappear in mental representations.
Although the use of gender-fair linguistic expressions can effectively prevent these
negative consequences and promote gender equality, there are even more implicit forms
of gender bias in language that are difficult to suppress. By choosing terms at different
levels of abstraction, people can affect the attributions of the receiver in a way that is
consistent with their stereotypical beliefs. Linguistic abstraction, thus, is a very subtle
resource used to represent women in a less favorable way and thus to enact gender
discrimination without meaning to discriminate or even be aware that this linguistic
behavior has discriminatory results. In order to reduce gender bias, it is necessary to
change people’s linguistic habits by making them aware of the beneficial effects of
gender-fair expressions.

Keywords: linguistic gender bias, sexism, masculine generics, gender-fair language, language abstraction, gender
stereotypes, intergroup communication

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Gender Bias and Sexism in Language

Introduction: Linguistic Processes and the

Reproduction of Gender Bias
Verbal communication is one of the most powerful means through which sexism and
gender discrimination are perpetrated and reproduced. Why is that so? The answer is
twofold. First, the content of gender stereotypes, according to which women should
display communal/warmth traits (e.g., being nice, caring, and generous), and men should
display agentic/competence traits (e.g., being efficient, agentic, and assertive; Cuddy,
Fiske, & Glick, 2004; Eagly, Wood, & Diekman, 2000), are reproduced in the lexical
choices of everyday communication (Maass & Arcuri, 1996). However, the content of
gender stereotypes is not neutral, as it reflects the asymmetries of status and power in
favor of men, which are attached to the corresponding social roles (Eagly et al., 2000). In
turn, these asymmetries are subtly expressed in the words used to refer to men and
women, with men being described with more agentic-related words and women described
with more communal-related words (e.g., Gaucher, Friesen, & Kay, 2011; Madera, Hebl, &
Martin, 2009; Moscatelli, Ellemers, Menegatti, & Rubini, 2016). Given that language not
only reflects stereotypical beliefs but also affects recipients’ cognition and behavior, the
use of expressions consistent with gender stereotypes contributes to transmit and
reinforce such belief system and can produce actual discrimination against women.

Second, the hidden yet consensual norm according to which the prototypical human
being is male is reproduced in the structure of many languages (Silveira, 1980). To
understand how the sex is embedded in the grammatical and syntactical rules of different
languages, and therefore the extent to which a language contributes to perpetrate gender
bias, Stahlberg, Braun, Irmen, and Sczesny (2007) proposed a distinction between three
language types: genderless languages, natural gender languages, and grammatical
gender languages. All of them have lexical expressions of sex in words of the type
“women,” “sister,” “father,” or “man.” However, this is the only sex-marking for
genderless languages (e.g., Finnish, Turkish), that have neither grammatical gender for
nouns nor for personal pronouns. In natural gender languages (e.g., English,
Scandinavian languages) there is not grammatical marking of sex, such that most nouns
and their dependent linguistic forms (articles, adjectives, pronouns) can be used to refer
to both males and females, and personal pronouns are the major resource for expressing
gender. In grammatical gender languages (e.g., French, Italian, German) all nouns are
assigned feminine or masculine (or neutral) gender, and the dependent parts of speech
carry grammatical agreement to the gender of the corresponding noun. For instance, the
sea is masculine in Italian, il mare, and feminine in French, la mer. Moreover, in these
languages, grammatical and syntactical rules are built in a way that feminine nouns or
adjectives are often marked as they derive from the corresponding masculine form.
Similarly, masculine nouns and pronouns are often used with a generic function, that is,
to refer to both men and women.

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Gender Bias and Sexism in Language

In the same vein, there are linguistic conventions according to which powerless groups,
such as women, should be compared to powerful groups, such as men (“Compared to
men, women are . . .”) and not vice versa (Pratto, Korchmaros, & Hegarty, 2007).
However, as the content of stereotypes, such linguistic forms are not neutral: They make
women disappear in mental representations (Stahlberg et al., 2007) and lead to consider
gender differences in favor of men as larger and legitimate (Bruckmüller, Hegarty, &
Abele, 2012). The insidious consequence is that people perceive gender bias in language
as normative and enact gender discrimination by simply following communication rules
(Ng, 2007). For the same reasons, the use of gender-fair expressions instead of masculine
generics (i.e., word pairs, which combine a feminine and a masculine forms, splitting
forms such as s/he, she/he, or neutralizations, such as chairperson instead of chairman), is
considered the primary route to reduce gender bias in language and promote gender
equality.

However, there are even more subtle ways to reproduce gender bias through everyday
language use that are slightly difficult to suppress. Indeed, by choosing terms that have
the same meaning but differ in their level of abstraction, people can affect the
attributions of the receiver in a way that is consistent with their stereotypical beliefs even
though they are not aware of doing so (Douglas & Sutton, 2003; Rubini, Menegatti, &
Moscatelli, 2014). Linguistic abstraction, thus, is a very subtle resource that can be used
to represent women in a less favorable way and thus to enact gender discrimination
without meaning to discriminate or even be aware that this linguistic behavior has
discriminatory results (e.g., Rubini & Menegatti, 2014).

In the following it is first explained why gender stereotypes can be considered the origin
of gender bias in language and how they produce gender inequality. Then research is
presented on how such content is reflected in the language used to describe men and
women. After that, the main research on how the structure of many languages is biased
in favor of men and thus produces gender discrimination, especially in the workplace, is
presented. In the subsequent sections, the double-sided effects of the use of gender-fair
language are illustrated, and a subtle form of implicit linguistic discrimination
transmitted through linguistic abstraction is described. Finally, considerations on how to
reduce gender bias through the use of gender-fair language are advanced.

The Origin of Gender Bias in Language: Gender

Stereotypes
Gender stereotypes are beliefs about the attributes of men and women and produce
expectations about what they are like and should be like. According to the social role
theory, gender stereotypes originate in the gender-typical social roles and thus reflect the
sexual division of labor and gender hierarchy of the society. Men and women have
historically held different social roles (Eagly et al., 2000): Men have been more likely to
engage in tasks that require speed, strength, and the possibility of being away from home
for long periods of time, whereas women have been more likely to stay home and engage
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Gender Bias and Sexism in Language

in family tasks, such as child-rearing. As a consequence, men are perceived as, and
expected to be, agentic, namely, active, independent, and resolute, whereas women are
perceived as, and expected to be, communal, namely, kind, helpful, and benevolent. In
other terms, the content of gender stereotypes has been established by the
characteristics and activities required by individuals of each sex in their sex-typical
occupations and family roles: Women are expected to engage in a feminine gender role
that reflects communal qualities but not agentic ones (Wood & Eagly, 2002).

In turn, these expectations lead to normative pressure to engage, since childhood, in

behaviors consistent with sex-typical work and family roles. Indeed, behaviors that are
consistent with the gender stereotypic expectations of social roles are considered as more
desirable for the congruent sex (i.e., agentic behaviors for men and communal behaviors
for women). However, the content of stereotypes is not neutral, as the traditional roles
occupied by men are higher in hierarchies of status and authority than those occupied by
women. This is particularly evident in the workplace, where women are more likely than
men to be employed in positions with lower status and less power than men.

Similar conclusions have been reached by the stereotype content model (Fiske, Cuddy,
Glick, & Xu, 2002), according to which stereotyped groups can be differentiated along
two dimensions, competence and warmth—which in turn can be associated to the
dimensions of agency and communion. Whereas warmth captures traits that are related to
perceived intent, such as friendliness, helpfulness, sincerity, trustworthiness, and
morality, competence refers to traits that are related to perceived ability, including
intelligence, skill, creativity, and efficacy (Cuddy, Fiske, & Glick, 2008). The model
accounts for evidence according to which attitudes toward some social groups are not
negative on both warmth and competence, but are mixed or ambivalent (low on one
dimension and high on the other). This is especially true for gender stereotypes. Indeed,
“women are usually liked or respected but not both” (Cuddy et al., 2004, p. 705). For
instance, housewives are seen as warm, but not competent, and yield to paternalist
prejudice that in turn elicits condescending affection. Conversely, female professionals
are seen as competent, but cold, and induce envy, jealousy, and resentment.

Because of this very ambivalence, gender prejudice differs from prejudice toward other
types of groups. Research has, in fact, shown that attitudes toward women are generally
more favorable than those toward men, because of the high value attributed on the
positive communal/warmth characteristics (Heilman & Eagly, 2008). Thus, how is it that
women are loved and disadvantaged all at once? Eagly and Mladinic (1993) pointed out
that the favorable communal traits ascribed to women are also traits of defense that,
when enacted in daily interaction, place a person in a subordinate, less powerful position.
Thus, the favorable traits attributed to women may maintain their lower status and
reinforce gender inequality.

This process has been further clarified by Glick and Fiske (1996, 2001), who identified
two forms of sexist prejudice: expressly hostile and subjectively benevolent. Hostile
sexism encompasses a derogatory depiction of women and negative feelings toward them

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Gender Bias and Sexism in Language

in order to justify male power, traditional gender roles, and men’s consideration of
women as sexual objects. Benevolent sexisms is a more subtle form of prejudice toward
women because it sees them as pure, kind, gentle, and in need of men’s protection,
therefore justifying male dominance and women’s subordinate role (Eagly, 1987).

Finally, ambivalent sexism can be alternately hostile or benevolent, depending on the type
of women it refers to. Ambivalent sexists can reconcile the seemingly contradictory
attitudes about women by directing hostility toward female professionals and
benevolence toward homemakers (Glick & Fiske, 1996). Thus, the warm but incompetent
stereotype of housewives justifies women’s domestic role and exclusion from male-
dominant positions. Similarly, the competent but cold stereotype of working men could be
used to keep women out of male-dominated, powerful positions (Cuddy et al., 2004;
Phelan, Moss-Racusin, & Rudman, 2008; Rudman & Glick, 1999, 2001).

Research on the Content of Gender Stereotypes

in Language Use
The content of gender stereotypes is reflected in the lexical choices that people make in
everyday communication. It is well established that the category label used to refer to a
particular group automatically activates the traits stereotypically associated with the
group (Maass & Arcuri, 1996). This is also true for the communal and agentic traits that
characterize gender stereotypes. They emerge when individuals freely describe men and
women and when they are asked to evaluate the characteristics of individual men and
women seen in photographs (Feingold, 1998). Words consistent with gender stereotypes
have powerful effects also when presented at a subliminal level, whereby they lead
participants to classify gender pronouns more quickly into male and female categories
(Banaji & Hardin, 1996). Moreover, participants identify more quickly the gender of male
or female first names that matches the primes’ gender than when presented with gender-
unrelated words (Blair & Banaji, 1996).

Thus, the linguistic choices made by the speaker (such as the use of stereotypical
consistent words) affect the cognitive processes of the listener and this occurs
automatically. Given that semantic labels automatically activate information associated
with the label, gender stereotypes are activated by gender-related words even in
unprejudiced people who do not endorse the stereotype. This is even more relevant as
stereotypical beliefs about men and women are embedded in the lexicon of many
languages. For instance, there are many more English words to refer to men than to
women (Maass & Arcuri, 1996), although the number of expressions to refer to
promiscuous women is 10 times greater than those to refer to promiscuous men (Ng,
1990). Importantly, the communal personal characteristics that are assigned to women
and the agentic characteristics that are assigned to men are generally expressed in trait
terminology. In media texts, for instance, men are placed more frequently in the role of
logical subject and are described as more active, whereas women are placed more
frequently in helpless or victim roles, and are depicted as more passive and emotional
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Gender Bias and Sexism in Language

(Kruse, Weimer, & Wagner, 1988). Even the terminology used to compose obituaries of
deceased male and female managers reflects gender stereotypes (Kirchler, 1992). Men
are described as highly knowledgeable and intelligent experts, and women are described
as adorable, likable, and highly committed to their work.

Asymmetries in vocabulary of many languages also result in a lack of terms referring to

one sex. Due to gender stereotypes that want women to be pure and family oriented,
there is no male counterpart in current language use for terms such as virgin, working
mother, or career women (cf. Maass & Arcuri, 1996). Also in many languages there is no
male equivalent for Miss, suggesting that being married was (and sometimes is)
considered as relevant for the status of women but not of men. These lexical gaps are
particularly evident for work-related terms. Classic examples are all the English terms
ending with -man, such as businessman, chairman, anchorman, or policeman, for which
the corresponding feminine term has been coined only recently when women started to
enter male-dominated work fields. Importantly, efforts have been made to introduce
gender-neutral terms, such as anchor, flight attendant, chairperson, or health operator
(instead of nurse), in order to refer to men and women with one occupation term (Maass,
Suitner, & Merkel, 2013).

Research on the Content of Gender Stereotypes

in Job-Related Language
The stereotype-consistent words used to depict men and women have been analyzed
especially regarding the workplace, where “gender stereotypes are alive, well, and busy
producing gender discrimination” (Heilman & Eagly, 2008, p. 393). Biased workplace
evaluations are caused by the mismatch between the communal stereotypes of women
and desirable work roles (Heilman, 2001). Managerial and executive-level jobs are usually
considered to be masculine, as they require agentic qualities, such as ambition,
aggressiveness, and achievement. Therefore, attitudes are often less positive toward
female than male leaders, and it is more difficult for women to become and succeed as
leaders (Eagly & Karau, 2002).

On its part, language may reinforce women’s underrepresentation in traditionally male-

dominated occupations through the gendered wording used in job recruitment linguistic
materials. Content analyses of letters of recommendation for college (LaCroix, 1985) and
graduate schools (Watson, 1987) revealed the use of stereotypical gender-related words,
which describe female applicants as feminine and male applicants as masculine.
Moreover, letters of recommendation for male applicants who had been hired at an
American medical school contained more outstanding adjectives, such as superb,
outstanding, and remarkable, than those for female applicants, even though objective
criteria showed no gender differences in qualifications (Trix & Psenka, 2003). Letters for
male applicants also included more research-related adjectives, such as a reference to
“his research,” “his ability,” or “his career,” whereas letters for female applicants
included more reference to “her teaching,” or “her training.” Recently, Madera et al.
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Gender Bias and Sexism in Language

(2009) found that agentic and communal stereotypical characteristics are used in letters
of recommendation for faculty positions in a way that discriminates against female
applicants. Women are described by more communal adjectives, such as kind, helpful,
sympathetic, tactful, warm, agreeable, than men, who are described with more agentic
terms, such as dominant, forceful, independent, confident, outspoken, intellectual,
ambitious. Moreover, letters written for women contain more social-communal-related
terms, such as husband, kids, wife, babies, family, colleagues, children, than letters for
men, which are composed of more agentic orientation-related terms, such as earn, gain,
insight, think, know, do. Interestingly, for female applicants, male writers use more
agentic orientation terms than female writers do. In a second study, Madera et al. (2009)
found that applicants who presented with letters composed of more communal-related
terms are less likely to be hired than those described with agentic-related terms and the
number of communal terms mediates the relationship between applicant gender and
hireability ratings.

Gaucher and colleagues (2011) investigated whether masculine-related words (such as

competitive, dominant, and leader) emerge within job advertisements in male-dominated
areas, and whether the mere presence of these masculine words dissuade women from
applying to jobs in that area. They content coded job advertisements for occupations that
were highly male (e.g., plumber, electrician, mechanic, engineer, security guard) and
female dominated (e.g., administrative assistant, early childhood educator, nurse,
bookkeeper). Results showed that job advertisements within male-dominated areas
contained greater masculine wording than advertisements from female-dominated areas.
Moreover, the inclusion of more masculine stereotype-linked words, like the ones used in
the advertisements for male-dominated jobs, makes a given job less appealing to female
candidates. This effect occurred, at least in part, because women anticipated less
belongingness in the positions advertised with the masculine-worded descriptions. It is
interestingly to note that, in these studies, not a single participant suspected that his or
her responses were influenced by the wording of the advertisements. This suggests that
the use of stereotypic-consistent words operates beyond people’s awareness and could
play a particularly powerful and insidious role in perpetrating gender inequality.

Another way through which language is used to discriminate women in the job selection
process is represented by the words chosen to compose their evaluations. Moscatelli et
al. (2016) content coded the written reports of a hiring committee to examine how often
positive and negative words referred to the evaluative dimensions of competence,
sociability, and morality were used to motivate the hiring vs. rejection decision
concerning male and female candidates. Recent research has revealed that, within
judgments in the warmth/communal cluster, a more refined distinction should be made
between sociability and morality (e.g., Brambilla, Sacchi, Menegatti, & Moscatelli, 2016;
Leach, Ellemers, & Barreto, 2007). Sociability refers to individuals’ ability to establish
connections with others and indicates their style of engagement. Morality pertains to
perceived (contextual) appropriateness of social behavior, which is seen to reveal
intentions to do what is considered right (Ellemers, Pagliaro, & Barreto, 2013). On the
light of this distinction, Moscatelli et al. (2016) found that hiring decisions about female
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Gender Bias and Sexism in Language

candidates are more likely to be motivated by the use of terms referred to their
sociability, such as open, friendly, or sociable, and to their morality, such as respectful,
responsible, correct, reliable, transparent, or trustworthy, in addition to their
competence, such as efficient, pragmatic, skilled, ability, professionalism, creative, or
active. In a specular way, rejection of female candidates is justified by describing them
with terms referred to their lack of morality, such as disrespectful, unreliable, unclear, or
prejudiced, and sociability, such as introverted, rigid, formal, closed, or aggressive.
Conversely, evaluations of both hired and rejected male candidates were composed by
more competence than morality and sociability terms. These results highlighted that
selectors use language to differentiate evaluations of female and male job candidates not
only on the stereotypical dimensions of warmth and competence, but also on the morality
dimension. Moreover, female candidates are asked to meet higher requirements and have
to perform well on different evaluation dimensions to be selected, whereas justifications
of men’s hiring and rejection are primarily based on the use of competence-related terms
only.

Research on Gender Bias in the Structure of

Language
Gender bias and sexism are embedded in the grammatical structure of most languages
and therefore are perceived to be normative (see Hamilton, 1988; Ng, 2007; Stahlberg et
al., 2007). The most evident linguistic gender inequality is that expressions referring to
females are often grammatically more complex than those referring to males. In
languages with grammatical gender, such as German, Italian, or Spanish, the two forms
are often symmetrical, as in the case of ginecologo (male gynecologist) and ginecologa
(female gynecologist) in Italian. In other cases, they are clearly asymmetrical as most
nouns referred to female persons are composed by adding a suffix to the corresponding
masculine terms. An example is the Italian suffix -essa (corresponding to the suffix -ess in
English, e.g., hostess, authoress), which is added to masculine words to create the
derived female correspondent, such as professoressa (female professor) from the
masculine professore, or studentessa (female student) from the masculine term studente.
Also in English, a so-called natural gender language because it does not have
grammatical marking of sex, there are rather asymmetrical feminine forms that derive
from the masculine ones, such as heroine from hero, actress from actor. Moreover,
linguistic marking with feminine suffices is commonly considered as necessary when
referring to a female person. When talking about a man, however, there is no need to
make explicit the gender with a distinct masculine marking. This is because there is
implicit agreement that the prototypical human being is male. Therefore, when speakers
refer to a person with a generic term, it is assumed to be male unless there is an explicit
indication to the contrary (Silveira, 1980). For instance, Hamilton (1991), who postulated
the equation “Male = People and People = Men,” found that speakers chose the terms

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Gender Bias and Sexism in Language

individual or person over man when referring to a male adult, whereas they chose women
to refer to a female.

More recently it has been shown a “linguistic normativity effect” according to which
people tend to compare groups or individuals by mentioning first the more powerful or
higher status ones (e.g., “ Compared to men, women are . . .,” or “Compared to fathers,
mothers are . . .”). This biased comparison implicitly favors the first mentioned group,
which becomes the norm against which the other is compared (Pratto et al., 2007).
Specifically, Bruckmüller et al. (2012) found that when men are mentioned as the referent
group of comparison in a typically male (leadership) context, status inequalities are
perceived as more legitimate and the gender stereotypes of men as agentic and women as
communal are more readily endorsed.

However, sexist language has one of its most harmful tools in masculine forms used as a
generic. In languages with grammatical gender, it is common and accepted to use
masculine nouns to refer to both men and women, or to persons whose gender is
irrelevant or unknown. For instance, in Italian and German, the masculine, rather than
the feminine, plurals (e.g., studenti and Studenten) are used to describe a general group
of people (e.g., students) in a sex-unspecified way. This is even more likely to occur when
speakers refer to women in predominantly male, high-status professions, such as chirurgo
(surgeon) or primo ministro (prime minister), which represent masculine forms used also
when referring exclusively to women. The opposite does not occur for men in typical
female job positions, such as infermiera (nurse) or ostetrica (midwife) for which some
languages, such as Italian, provide the corresponding male terms, infermiere and
ostetrico. In languages where nouns have no grammatical gender, such as English,
generic forms comprise the use of masculine pronouns: she and her refer to females only,
whereas he and his can be used either in a male-specific or in a generic sense. Masculine
generics may represent the grammatically correct form for referring to both sexes and, if
masculine generics actually represented males and females with equal likelihood, no
particular consequences would occur. However, this is not the case. Experimental
research has clearly demonstrated that masculine generic does not depict women and
men as equal human beings and that it makes females invisible in people imagery and
memory, thus failing to perform its assigned generic function (Ng, 2007). Masculine forms
are mainly associated with males in people’s mental representations and activate traits,
behaviors, and images associates with men. Most studies on the cognitive effects of
masculine generics present participants with sentences that could be composed of a
masculine generic (he, they, mankind, men) or a gender-fair linguistic form (e.g., she or
he, s/he; women and men; human being; person). Then participants are asked to perform
different tasks, such as to guess the sex of the described persons, to draw or select
pictures representing men and/or women, to decide whether the text referred to women,
to write stories about the persons described, and so on. Results showed, for instance, that
gender-fair forms, which have an explicit reference to women, activate more female
associations than the masculine generic forms (for reviews, see Sczesny, Formanowicz, &
Moser, 2016; Stahlberg et al., 2007). When answering a question with a masculine
generic (“Who is your favorite musician?” “Please, name three athletes.”), people
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Gender Bias and Sexism in Language

associate and retrieve predominantly male exemplars. Masculine forms are also
associated with slower identification of women as members of certain groups (such as
athletes, actors, or other occupational groups). More women are mentioned when gender-
fair forms (e.g., word pairs such as “MusikerMASC/MusikerinnenFEM”/“SportlerMASC/
SportlerinnenFEM”) are used instead of masculine forms, especially in male-dominated
fields, where women constituted the minority. Interestingly, masculine linguistic forms
may lead to assume more men than women to be in a professional group even for typical
feminine professions, thus overriding the effects of gender stereotypes (for a review, see
Braun, Sczesny, & Stahlberg, 2005).

The male bias activated by masculine generic forms emerges also in real-life contexts,
such as legal language. An 1850 Act of the British Parliament prescribed the use of
masculine generics in legal language and, consequently, women could claim their rights
only when they were mentioned explicitly in a certain law (Scutt, 1985). In an
experimental reconstruction of an original trial for murder, Hamilton, Hunter, and Stuart-
Smith (1992) asked participants to decide whether the accused woman had acted in self-
defense by using the generic pronouns he or the word pair he or she, or the word she. In
the first case, only 5 participants decided for self-defense, whereas when gender-fair
forms were used 16 and 11 participants respectively made such a decision. In the
political context, the use of gender-fair forms when asking participants which politician of
different parties should run for the office of chancellor raised the number of female
politicians mentioned in response.

Overall, the evidence reviewed here shows that “the choice of masculine words to
perform generic functions had little to do with any linguistic superiority that these words
might have relative to feminine or neuter words and a lot to do with the male dominance
in society at large” (Ng, 2007, p. 117). This carries the need for developing gender-fair
alternatives to masculine generics, such as word pairs, which combine feminine and
masculine nouns (bambini e bambine in Italian) or pronouns (she and he), splitting forms
(s/he, she/he), or neutralizations (hen, neutral pronoun in Swedish, chairperson instead of
chairman). But if the aim is to promote gender equality, which is the most appropriate
expression when referring to women? Psychological research that has attempted to
answer this question yielded complex and sometimes divergent evidence.

Recent Developments: Effects of Gender-Fair

Language
Early research on the effects of gender-fair language has been conducted by Bem and
Bem (1973) who analyzed the wording of job advertisement. They found that women were
more willing to apply for a counter-stereotypical occupation when it was advertised with
a gender-neutral form. Although the use of gender-specific expressions, such as lineman
or linewoman, which specify a gender preference in job advertisements are not permitted
anymore,1 vacant positions are still often advertised with masculine forms, and this is
particularly true for leadership positions. More recent research has shown that masculine
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Gender Bias and Sexism in Language

pronouns used to describe ideal applicants for a vacant positions reduce women’ s
motivation to apply as well as their sense of belongingness and identification with the
work context and the job (Stout & Dasgupta, 2011).

The wording of job advertisement affects not only potential applicants, but also personnel
selectors. Female applicants are perceived to fit less well with a high-status position than
male applicants when the masculine form is used, even though they are perceived to be
equally competent. However, female and male applicants are judged as fitting the high-
status leadership position similarly well when word pairs are used (Horvath & Sczesny,
2016).

Moreover, the perception of professions is affected by the form in which they are referred
to. Children’s and adolescents’ opinions about professions and their vocational interests
are strongly affected by linguistic forms. Professions presented to adolescents in the
masculine form lead to perceive women as more successful in typically feminine and men
in typically masculine jobs. In contrast, when presented with word pairs, female and male
professionals are perceived as equally likely to succeed in both typically feminine and
masculine professions. Moreover, when professionals are described with masculine forms,
they are perceived as less warm in typically masculine jobs and warmer in typically
feminine jobs than those described with word pairs. In contrast, perception of
competence does not change (Vervecken & Hannover, 2015). Similarly when professions
were presented with word pairs, children rated female job holders in typically masculine
professions as more successful and girls as more interested in these typically masculine
professions (Vervecken, Hannover, & Wolter, 2013). However, side effects of the use of
gender-fair forms in job titles also emerged. Children perceive typically masculine
professions presented with word pairs as less difficult and therefore more accessible, but
they also attribute to such professions less salary (Vervecken & Hannover, 2015).

In a similar vein, referring to Italian female professionals using feminine titles with the
suffix -essa (e.g., professoressa, female professor) instead of masculine titles (e.g.,
professore, male professor) leads to perceive these professionals as less persuasive
(Mucchi-Faina, 2005). This effect is probably due to the perceived lower social status of
professionals ending in -essa as compared to those ending in -a (e.g., professora), which
has been recently introduced as an alternative to the masculine form, especially for
higher status positions (Merkel, Maass, & Frommelt, 2012).

The double-sided effects of the use of gender-fair language have been specifically
examined by Horvath, Merkel, Maass, and Sczesny (2016) who measured women’s
visibility as well as their status perception and salary estimates. Results showed that
women’s visibility increased for most professions when word pairs were used instead of
masculine forms. Moreover, typically feminine professions lost and typically masculine
professions gained in social status when word pairs are used rather than masculine
forms. Typically female professions presented with word pairs also lost in salary estimate
than when presented with the masculine form.

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Gender Bias and Sexism in Language

Another detrimental consequence for women using feminine job titles is that the feminine
form emphasizes the reference to their gender and the activation of the corresponding
stereotype. For instance, women described using feminine job titles are perceived as less
competent by both men and women, but less warm only by men (Budziszewska, Hansen,
& Bilewicz, 2014).

Accordingly, women in high-status positions are perceived as warmer, that is, closer to
the stereotype of women, than when referred to with a masculine term. Thus there is a
paradox according to which, in high-status positions, women could benefit from the use of
masculine job titles.

Negative side effects of making women more visible through the use of feminine job titles
have been found also in job evaluations. Women designated with a feminine job title
receive less favorable evaluations than those designed with a masculine title. Moreover,
female applicants who apply for a gender-neutral job and refer to themselves with a
feminine (vs. masculine) professional title suffer similar disadvantages (Formanowicz,
Bedynska, Cislak, Braun, & Sczesny, 2012).

Recently, Hansen, Littwitz, and Sczesny (2016) found that gender-inclusive forms used in
news reports enhanced individuals’ own usage of gender-inclusive language and this
resulted in more gender-balanced mental representations of the roles described. Reading
about “heroines and heroes” made participants assume a higher percentage of women
among persons performing heroic acts than reading about “heroes” only. Importantly, the
influence of gender-inclusive language on the perceived percentage of women in a role is
mediated by the speakers’ own usage of inclusive forms. This suggests that people who
encounter gender-inclusive forms use them more themselves and, in turn, have more
gender-balanced mental representations of social roles.

Accordingly, it should also be noted that reactions to gender-fair linguistic forms are not
equal among individuals. For instance, there are differences between people who endorse
modern sexist beliefs and those who do not. Unlike old-fashioned sexists, who explicitly
support gender inequality and endorse traditional gender roles, modern (or neo) sexists
express beliefs that indirectly condone the unequal treatment of women and men
(Tougas, Brown, Beaton, & Joly, 1995). The endorsement of modern sexist beliefs leads to
less recognition and a higher likelihood of using sexist language. In contrast, those who
do not endorse modern sexism may purposefully replace sexist language with nonsexist
language, even if they may still have automatic associations that lead to the use of sexist
linguistic forms (Swim, Mallet, & Stangor, 2004).

Recent Developments: Subtle Gender Bias and

Linguistic Abstraction
Linguistic discrimination of women can be perpetrated not only by the content of
linguistic expressions, but also through the use of specific linguistic categories, which call

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Gender Bias and Sexism in Language

the recipient’s attention to specific features of the described person (Semin, 2000).
Specifically, the level of abstraction of different classes of terms are functional in
“zooming in” or “zooming out” on the target of judgment by providing either a detailed
context-dependent or a holistic, general, enduring representation of the person (Rubini et
al., 2014). Thus, the same behavioral episode can be described at different levels of
abstraction by keeping the content of the message constant. For instance, two applicants
for an academic job positions with the very same CV can be evaluated saying that “the
candidate did not write enough papers” or that “the candidate was not an innovative
researcher.” These two statements convey the similar content that applicant’s
publications are not enough to be suitable for the position. However, the first statement,
which is more concrete, implicitly suggests that the applicant did not reach the requested
standard in a specific area and thus restricts the unfavorable evaluation to a transitory
situation or performance that is likely to change in different contexts or for future
selection procedures (Semin & Fiedler, 1988). By contrast, the second statement, which is
more abstract, does not only concern the applicant’s publications, but refers to a durable
quality and conveys the idea that the applicant is not able to do high-quality research at
all and therefore that s/he is very likely to fail also in other job evaluations. The concrete-
abstract dimension of language has been identified by the linguistic category model
(Semin & Fiedler, 1988), which distinguishes between four word categories increasing in
their level of abstraction: descriptive action verbs (DAVs: e.g., “to kick,” “to hug”),
interpretative action verbs (IAVs: e.g., “to hurt,” “to help”), state verbs (SVs: e.g., “to
hate”; “to love”), and adjectives (ADJs: e.g., “aggressive,” “kind”). Terms in the same
category trigger similar cognitive inferences, which in turn exert a systematic influence
on non-linguistic behavior (e.g., Menegatti & Rubini, 2013). Abstract statements, as
opposed to concrete ones, are perceived to reveal more about the person and less about
the situation, imply greater temporal stability, and are more likely to produce
expectations of repetition in the future. A considerable amount of research has shown
that social stereotypes and prejudice are implicitly transmitted through the linguistic
intergroup bias (Maass, Salvi, Arcuri, & Semin, 1989; Rubini et al., 2014; Wigboldus &
Douglas, 2007), the tendency to describe ingroup socially desirable behaviors and
outgroup undesirable behaviors at a higher level of abstraction than ingroup undesirable
and outgroup desirable behaviors. This language use shapes a more favorable portrait of
ingroup members as possessing highly stable positive features (while minimizing the
generalizability of their negative behaviors), and at the same time emphasizes the
negative characteristics of outgroup members. Given that the receivers make precisely
the inferences intended by the LIB, this use of language abstraction is actually a means to
maintain and transmit social stereotypes (Wigboldus, Semin, & Spears, 2000). Even more
important, the linguistic intergroup bias is an implicit way to enact intergroup
discrimination and prejudice, because individuals are able to censor or alter their
responses to explicit or outward measures of those phenomena, but appear unable to
spontaneously inhibit linguistic bias (e.g., Douglas & Sutton, 2003; Franco & Maass,
1999).

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Gender Bias and Sexism in Language

Accordingly, gender discrimination can be perpetrated at the implicit, subtle level of

language abstraction. Born and Taris (2010) examined the impact of wording gender
typical and atypical candidate profiles in an employment advertisement using behaviors/
verbs or nouns/adjectives. They found that women were more sensitive to gender
typicality of the job advertised when it was described with nouns or adjectives. Moreover,
they were more likely to express the intention to apply for masculine jobs when they were
described in more concrete, behavioral terms. No differences were found in the male
sample. Thus, variations in the level of abstraction of interpersonal terms strongly affect
gender discrimination right from the early phases of the personnel selection process.

Later on, women could be implicitly discriminated by the terms chosen to write formal
evaluations that justify and motivate hiring decisions. Rubini and Menegatti (2014) coded
the level of abstraction of judgments written by selection committees about applicants for
associate professor positions at an Italian university. These judgments are part of formal
documents that report the entire selection procedures and constitute the “rationale” upon
which a final hiring decision is made. Results revealed a gender linguistic bias according
to which judgments of female applicants were composed of negative terms at a more
abstract level and positive terms at a more concrete level than those of male applicants,
which were composed of negative terms at a lower level of abstraction and positive terms
at a higher level of abstraction. Furthermore, this tendency was enhanced for rejected
applicants, such that rejected women were described more unfavorably than rejected
men. More importantly, this implicit discrimination was perpetrated only by male
committee members, whereas female ones did not differentiate the level of abstraction
used to describe men and women. These findings were further explained by a fine-
grained analysis of the use of each linguistic category, revealing that discrimination
against female applicants was mainly based on the use of adjectives. Women were
evaluated with greater proportions of negative ADJs (e.g., “She is not an innovative
researcher”) independently of whether they were or were not selected for the position. In
contrast, male applicants, even when rejected, were evaluated with many negative action
verbs, which allow negative aspects to be limited to restricted contexts.

Overall, this research shows that selectors use language abstraction to implicitly
communicate that the positive traits of men and the negative traits of women are stable
across situations and more likely to remain unaltered than those of male applicants. This
language, in turn, conveys a representation of women as having less worth than their
male colleagues and could damage their future opportunities to enter academia or reach
higher positions. In this vein, the use of language abstraction can be a subtle means to
discriminate against female applicants—assuming equal qualifications of male and female
applicants—without explicitly selecting more men than women. Since modern societies
explicitly and legally forbid gender inequality in job recruitment and career development,
men seem to use language abstraction as an implicit means to maintain and reproduce
their power (Reid & Ng, 1999) in academia by depicting women as less-deserving
scientists than their male colleagues.

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Gender Bias and Sexism in Language

However, there is a communicative context in which the subtle gender discrimination

perpetrated trough variations of language abstraction works in the opposite direction,
namely, that of primary school evaluation. Menegatti, Crocetti, and Rubini (IN PRESS)
coded the level of abstraction of positive and negative terms used by primary school
teachers in final written evaluations of their students. The studies were conducted in
Italy, where written judgments are part of formal records that comprise marks for each
school subject and overall feedback on students’ global learning achievements that are
collectively written by the teachers of each class. These final records constitute formal
documents that are delivered to parents at the end of each academic year and are kept in
the school archives. Results first showed a correspondence between the implicit and
explicit levels at which evaluations were communicated, namely, language abstraction
and marks: The more students received high marks, the more they were evaluated with
positive abstract terms, which convey a very favorable description. Conversely, the lower
the marks, the more students were described in abstract negative terms, thus conveying
that their negative achievements are due to stable, inner characteristics, and difficult to
change. Second, there was an implicit gender linguistic bias in favor of female students,
who were evaluated with more abstract positive and more concrete negative terms than
males. This linguistic representation can have significant consequences for children in a
direct way, by affecting their motivation and self-esteem; or in an indirect way, by
affecting the representation that their families and teachers of subsequent school grades
form of their social and learning skills. Indeed, children from the age of 5 years onward
are able to infer that certain behavior described at a high level of abstraction is more
likely to be repeated than the same behavior described with more concrete terms, and
they recognize that abstract stories lead to attributions to the person instead of the
situation (Werkman, Wigboldus, & Semin, 1999). Thus, evaluations containing abstract
negative terms, as those received by boys, could have detrimental consequences for their
identity and self-esteem, motivation to improve, and future learning achievement. In
contrast, at an early age, girls seem to have an advantage compared to boys. But it is well
known that, as the years pass, they start to be discriminated at both implicit and explicit
levels and to find barriers to achieve the highest positions (e.g., Bellas & Toutkoushian,
1999; Ellemers, van den Heuvel, de Gilder, Maass, & Bovini, 2004). Following this
reasoning, it remains to understand at what point of girls’ and women’s lives their
positive linguistic representation is dramatically reversed and language becomes a subtle
means to maintain gender inequality.

Future Research: Reducing Gender Bias in

Language
Research on sexism and gender bias in language has clearly shown that asymmetries in
the social structure are reproduced in the content and the structure of language. Given
these assumptions, how could gender bias in language be reduced? Importantly, is the
use of gender-fair language actually effective in reducing gender bias and inequality?

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Gender Bias and Sexism in Language

First of all, it is necessary to make people aware of how sexist language works and of the
beneficial effects of the use of gender-fair expressions (Swim et al., 2004). This should
motivate the change of linguistic habits and to use language in a more symmetrical and
equal fashion. If this is very clear, less clear is whether the use of gender-fair expressions
could have positive effects. For instance, individual use of feminine job titles makes
women as a group more visible and such job titles more familiar. This produces gains for
women as a group (Braun et al., 2005). However, individual women who use feminine job
titles are evaluated in more disadvantageous ways, as they suffer the negative effects of
gender stereotypes and gender inequality prompted by female linguistic reference. For
this reason, several authors suggest that, to decide whether gender-fair form would help
to promote gender equality, it is necessary to consider long-term effects (for an overview,
see Sczesny et al., 2016). Indeed, more positive reactions to gender-fair linguistic forms
could be expected as time passes as a consequence of habituation. Some feminine forms
are perceived as negative because they sound awkward and grammatically incorrect in a
given language. As a consequence, the more feminine or gender-fair words are coined
and used, the more usual and neutral they will sound for a mere exposure effect. For
instance, in Sweden, the gender-neutral pronoun hen was added to the existing pronouns
for she and he. The pronoun was proposed to refer to persons whose gender was
unknown or irrelevant, and to people who categorize themselves outside the gender
dichotomy. At first, the majority of Swedish had negative attitudes toward the new word,
but after two years the use of the word increased and the reactions become more positive
(Gustafsson Sendén, Bäck, & Lindqvist, 2015). This is in line with recent findings
(Prewitt-Freilino, Caswell, & Laakso, 2012) showing that gender equality—especially in
terms of gender differences in economic participation and women’s greater access to
political empowerment—is higher in countries that speak natural gender or genderless
languages than in counties that speak gendered language. This relation is obtained by
controlling for other possible explaining factors, such as divergent geographic locations,
religious traditions, government systems, or level of development.

Finally, it should be considered that there are even more implicit forms of gender
discrimination in language use, such as those produced by the choice of terms at different
levels of linguistic abstraction, which are very difficult to recognize and suppress. Up to
now, no research has shown whether people could be trained to control the choice of
concrete or abstract terms, but it has been demonstrated that they are able to inhibit
linguistic bias if they are explicitly asked to do so (for instance, if they are asked to
describe an enemy in a favorable way; Douglas & Sutton, 2003). Thus, people should first
be informed of the effects of holding and communicating gender stereotypic expectations,
and then they should be formed to choice linguistic forms that facilitate gender equality.

Literature Review
The social-psychological literature on sexism and gender bias in language is extensive
and focused on different aspects. On the one hand, many authors have studied gender
bias in language with the aim of examining the more general topics of stereotypes and
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Gender Bias and Sexism in Language

prejudice. It is the case of the work by Banaji and colleagues, who analyzed the cognitive
organization of stereotypes by using terms that could be consistent or inconsistent with
gender stereotypes. They found that gender-related labels activate very easily the
corresponding stereotype at both superliminal and subliminal levels (Banaji & Hardin,
1996; Blair & Banaji, 1996). Others have examined the content of language use with the
aim of unfolding different ways through which gender discrimination in the workplace is
perpetrated. They showed that the content of gender stereotypes is reflected in the
content of the language used to describe men and women in both job evaluation (Madera,
Hebl, & Martin, 2009; Trix & Psenka, 2003) and job advertisement (Bem & Bem, 1973;
Gaucher, Friesen, & Kay, 2011). Moreover, this language use has concrete negative
consequences, as women described with stereotypic-consistent words are less likely to be
hired for high-status positions.

On the other hand, there is a large amount of research explicitly designed to investigate
the use and effects of masculine forms. Early works were conducted by Ng and
colleagues showing that masculine words fail to perform their assigned generic function,
as they actually render females invisible in imagery (Wilson & Ng, 1988) and memory
(Ng, 1990). More recently, Braun and colleagues (2005) wrote a comprehensive overview
of their line of research on the effects of masculine generics and gender-fair linguistic
forms on the cognitive inclusion of women. They demonstrated that gender-fair forms,
which have an explicit reference to women, activate more female associations than the
masculine generic forms and make women more visible, especially in male-dominated
fields.

An increasing interest on the effects of gender-fair language emerged from the study of
the effects of feminine job titles. Results of this research are controversial. Indeed, it has
been found that women’s visibility and perceived status increased for most professions
when word pairs are used instead of masculine forms (Horvath, Merkel, Maass, &
Sczesny, 2016). However, the use of feminine forms lead to less salary estimates (Horvath
et al., 2016), perceptions of lower competence and warmth (Budziszewska, Hansen, &
Bilewicz, 2014), and worse evaluations (Formanowicz, Bedynska, Cislak, Braun, &
Sczesny, 2012).

Less known is the contribution of the literature on the classic linguistic intergroup bias
(Maass, Salvi, Arcuri, & Semin, 1989) for the study of gender bias in language use.
Although 20 years of research on the use of language abstraction in the intergroup
context (for reviews, see Rubini, Menegatti, & Moscatelli, 2014; Wigboldus & Douglas,
2007), only recently Rubini and Menegatti (2014) have demonstrated that this linguistic
property of interpersonal terms could be a powerful yet implicit tool for gender
discrimination in personnel selection.

Current research has mostly focused on investigating whether the use of gender-fair
language is actually effective in hindering gender inequality and discrimination and
whether people are actually willing to use such language in formal and everyday
communication. In general, attitudes toward gender-fair language seem to become more

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Gender Bias and Sexism in Language

favorable the more frequently and longer it has been used (Gustafsson et al., 2015;
Sczesny et al., 2016).

Further Reading
Braun, F., Sczesny, S., & Stahlberg, D. (2005). Cognitive effects of masculine generics in
German: An overview of empirical findings. Communications, 30, 1–21.

Cuddy, A. J. C., Fiske, S. T., & Glick, P. (2008). Warmth and competence as universal
dimensions of social perception: The stereotype content model and the BIAS map. In M. P.
Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (pp. 61–149). San Diego, CA:
Academic Press.

Eagly, A. H., Wood, W., & Diekman, A. B. (2000). Social role theory of sex differences and
similarities: A current appraisal. In T. Eckes & H. M. Traunter (Eds.), The developmental
social psychology of gender (pp. 123–174). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Fiske, S. T., Cuddy, A. J. C., Glick, P., & Xu, J. (2002). A model of (often mixed) stereotype
content: Competence and warmth respectively follow from perceived status and
competition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 878–902.

Franco, F., & Maass, A. (1996). Implicit vs. explicit strategies of intergroup
discrimination: The role of intentional control in biased language use and reward
allocation. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 15, 335–359.

Glick, P., & Fiske, S. T. (2001). Ambivalent sexism. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in
experimental social psychology (Vol. 33, pp. 115–188), Thousand Oaks, CA: Academic
Press.

Maass, A., & Arcuri, L. (1996). Language and stereotyping. In C. N. Macrae, C. Stangor, &
M. Hewstone (Eds.), Stereotypes and stereotyping (pp. 193–226). New York: Guilford.

Ng, S. H. (2007). Language-based discrimination: Blatant and subtle forms. Journal of

Language and Social Psychology, 26, 106–122.

Rubini, M., Menegatti, M., & Moscatelli, S. (2014). The strategic role of language
abstraction in achieving symbolic and practical goals. European Review of Social
Psychology, 25, 263–313.

Sczesny, S., Formanowicz, M., & Moser, M. (2016). Can gender-fair language reduce
gender stereotyping and discrimination? Frontiers in Psychology, 7(25).

Stahlberg, D., Braun, F., Irmen, L., & Sczesny, S. (2007). Representation of the sexes in
language. In K. Fiedler (Ed.), Social communication (pp. 163–187). New York: Psychology
Press.

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Gender Bias and Sexism in Language

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Gender Bias and Sexism in Language

Notes:

(1.) On the heels of U.S. civil rights legislation (Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act)
deeming the practice of using job advertisements that overtly specify a preference for
male applicants unconstitutional, and the advent of the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission, explicit sex segregation of advertisements had abruptly ended by 1973
(Pedriana & Abraham, 2006).

Michela Menegatti

Department of Psychology, University of Bologna

Monica Rubini

Department of Psychology, Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna

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