Just Reading? How Gender-Fair Language Triggers Readers’ Use of Gender-Fair Forms

Abstract

Gender-fair language, that is, referring to men and women with symmetrical linguistic forms, has been found to promote gender equality, but it is largely unknown which factors help make gender-fair forms more common in everyday life. Two studies examined whether speakers of German used more gender-fair forms after reading a text with gender-fair wording (vs. masculine generics vs. no personal nouns vs. another topic). Both studies showed consistently that women used more gender-fair forms after reading the gender-fair text than the other texts, whereas men did not. Men employed more gender-fair forms only after being made aware of these forms (Study 2). To conclude, merely reading gender-fair texts enhances women’s inclination to use gender-fair language, whereas men need to be made aware of this type of language use. Both studies highlight the importance of using gender-fair language frequently and consistently in everyday life.

The Social Perception of Heroes and Murderers: Effects of Gender-Inclusive Language in Media Reports

“…In this process, participants’ own language use functioned as a mediator between the language of the media texts and the mental representation of social roles. Thus, our results not only replicate and link previous findings (Hamilton, 1988; Stahlberg et al, 2001; Koeser et al, 2015), but also illuminate the mechanism behind the effects of gender-inclusive language. Participants’ own use of gender-inclusive language made them think in more gender-inclusive ways.…”

“…In line with and extending earlier research, which relied on fill-in-the-gap sentences (Koeser et al, 2015), participants used more gender-inclusive forms after reading a text with word pairs when summarizing the text in their own words. Moreover, participants who read about “heroines and heroes” estimated a higher percentage of female heroes than those who read about “heroes.” Most importantly, we found that gender-inclusive language triggered a more gender-balanced use of language, and this use resulted in a more gender-balanced perception of social roles.…”

“…In one investigation, German participants listed more women when asked to name their favorite “heroine or hero in a novel” 1 (word pair form; German: Romanheldin oder Romanheld ) than those who were asked to name their favorite “hero in a novel” ( Romanheld ; Stahlberg and Sczesny, 2001). In addition to the impact of language on mental representations of women and men, recent research has shown that after reading a text with gender-inclusive wording, speakers used more gender-inclusive forms themselves in a fill-in-the-blank task (Koeser et al, 2015). …”

“…As mentioned above, reading a gender-inclusive text provoked more use of such language in a fill-in-the-blank task (Koeser et al, 2015). To replicate and extend this finding, we examined whether the effect on language use also held for more natural forms of language production, namely for texts written entirely by the participants themselves.…”

“…Thus, we directly manipulated only the text, but not participants’ language use per se . We expected that receiving a message in gender-inclusive wording would enhance speakers’ inclination to use such forms themselves (Koeser et al, 2015). This use, in turn, was expected to result in higher estimates of the percentage of women in the respective roles than reading a text with masculine generics (Hamilton, 1988).…”