Side effects of gender-fair language: How feminine job titles influence the evaluation of female applicants

Cisłak, Aleksandra; Formanowicz, Magdalena; Bedynska, Sylwia; Braun, Friederike; Sczesny, Sabine (15 June 2013). Side effects of gender-fair language: How feminine job titles influence the evaluation of female applicants (Unpublished). In: Final Conference of the Marie Curie Initial Training Network Language, Cognition, and Gender (ITN LCG). Bern, Schweiz. 13.06.-17.06.2013.

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In many languages, feminization has been used as a strategy to make language more gender-fair, because masculine terms, even in a generic function, exhibit a male bias. Up to date, little is known about possible side effects of this language use, for example, in personnel selection. In three studies, conducted in Polish, we analyzed how a female applicant was evaluated in a recruitment process, depending on whether she was introduced with a feminine or masculine job title. To avoid influences from existing occupations and terms, we used fictitious job titles in Studies 1 and 2: diarolożka (feminine) and diarolog (masculine). In Study 3, we referred to existing occupations that varied in gender stereotypicality. In all studies, female applicants with a feminine job title were evaluated less favorably than both a male applicant (Study 1) and a female applicant with a masculine job title (Studies 1, 2, and 3). This effect was independent of the gender stereotypicality of the occupation (Study 3). Participants' political attitudes, however, moderated the effect: Conservatives devaluated female applicants with a feminine title more than liberals (Studies 2 and 3).

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Division/Institute:	07 Faculty of Human Sciences > Institute of Psychology > Social Neuroscience and Social Psychology
UniBE Contributor:	Formanowicz, Magdalena Maria, Braun, Friederike, Sczesny, Sabine
Subjects:	300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology
Language:	English
Submitter:	Irène Gonce-Gyr
Date Deposited:	20 Nov 2014 09:46
Last Modified:	05 Dec 2022 14:31
URI:	https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/46126