Den 27-28 juni var Amanda på konferensen Future Sex i Surrey och presenterade resultaten från sin masteruppsats.

The Science of Gender Differences: Gender Essentialism as System Justification

Gender lay theory is a lay person theory which is used as a framework for interpreting information related to gender categorization. The present study investigated how individuals’ gender lay theory is affected by exposure to scientifically framed explanations for gender differences between women and men. It also investigated if gender essentialism functions as a system justifying mechanism by decreasing discrimination attribution, a situational rather than dispositional attribution, in response to a discriminatory situation. The 413 Swedish speaking participants were recruited from web forums and exposed to either a biologically focused (N = 133), or a social-constructivist focused (N = 125) scientifically framed text explaining gender differences, or not exposed to any text (N = 155). Compared to the control group, only exposure to social-constructivist gender discourse impacted gender lay theory by increasing endorsement of a gender as a socially constructed category. The group exposed to the biological text did not differ from the control group, indicating that an essentialist view of gender is the population norm. Discrimination attribution was indirectly affected by exposure to social-constructivist explanations for gender differences through gender lay theory, by increasing endorsement of a social gender lay theory which predicted a higher degree of discrimination attribution. These results point to a connection between exposure to scientific gender discourse, gender essentialism, and a situational attribution in response to a discriminatory situation. This study expands previous research in this field by showing that this connection also applies to an individual rather than general situation of gender discrimination.

Anna, Emma och Marie har varit på konferensen Gender Diversity in Survey Research i Göteborg, för att presentera våra tankar kring hur en kan/bör fråga om samt inkludera deltagarnas ”kön” i beteendevetenskaplig forskning. Vårt konferenspapper har titeln Measuring gender in surveys och kan laddas ner som pdf här.

Amanda, Hellen och Marie har varit på konferensen Context, Identity and Choice: Understanding the Constraints on Women’s Career Decisions i London för att presentera vår forskning. 
Hellen presenterade studien Gender-neutral pronouns as promoters of gender equality in the work place.

Abstract: The gender-neutral pronoun ‘hen’, has been introduced in Swedish as an addition to the gendered pronouns ‘hon’ [she] and ‘han’ [he]. It can be used in a generic way to refer to someone when not knowing a person’s gender, when gender is irrelevant, or to refer to someone who does not identify with the binary categories. 

Proponents of ‘hen’ have argued that the pronoun can reduce stereotyping in language. In previous research, ‘hen’ has been found to have no male bias when people try to determine whose job application they are reading. Reading a job application from ‘hen’, participants judged the person to be equally likely to be female or male in comparison with “the applicant” or “the candidate”, which were much more frequently imagined to be male (Bäck et al., 2015). 

In this presentation, I present the first eye tracking data on how ‘hen’ affects the way we imagine others when reading about them, and discuss the implications this has for understanding how gender-neutral language may work as a gender-fair language strategy. 

Amanda presenterade studien The (not so) Changing Man: Dynamic Gender Stereotypes in Sweden. Ladda ner postern som pdf här.

I början av mars besökte Helle och Marie Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) Annual Convention i Atlanta för att presentera studien Gender-neutral pronouns increase reading time during anaphor resolution: Evidence from Swedish. Ladda ner postern som pdf här.

Den 20-21 oktober besökte Anna och Emma den tionde nordiska konferensen om språk och kön, som den här gången hölls i Akureyri. Vi presenterade en av de studier där vi visat att hen tycks kunna minska den manliga bias som finns i språket.

Hen might reduce the male bias in the Swedish language

Abstract. In Swedish, the gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun ‘hen’ has been introduced, existing parallel with the two pronouns representing ‘she’ and ‘he’. One argument against the use of hen, is that there already exist gender neutral words in the Swedish language – hence no new words are needed, it is argued. However, earlier research on assumed gender-neutral words have identified a strong male bias, meaning that so-called neutral words are not perceived as neutral, but associated with masculinity. We examine if ‘hen’ more effectively can reduce the male bias, compared to other grammatically gender-neutral, and historically older, Swedish words. In one social psychological experiment, framed as a recruitment study, the 276 participants read about a job candidate applying for a gender-neutral position (in terms of gender distribution) as real-estate agent. The candidate was referred to as one of four gender-neutral words: ‘the applicant’ (den sökande), ‘the person’ (personen), the new gender-neutral third-person pronoun singular ‘hen’, or the impersonal pronoun singular ‘it’ (den; sometimes used as a gender-neutral personal pronoun). When having read the description, the participants were asked to choose what photo they believed showed the candidate, from four choices (two women and two men). Results show that ‘hen’ was the only condition not affected by a male bias: Most participants associated ‘the applicant’ (68 %), ‘the person’ (71 %) and ‘den’ (63 %) with a masculine gender, compared to the participants reading about ‘hen’ (52%). In sum, ‘hen’ seems to be genuinely gender neutral, compared to other “neutral” paraphrases, and could thereby be used to reduce gender bias in language.