Think political leader — think he or she? A multi-country test of a gender-fair language intervention to reduce gendered leadership stereotypes

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Contributors

  • Collaborators - (Author)
  • Chair of Psychology of Learning and Instruction
  • Clusters of Excellence CeTI: Centre for Tactile Internet
  • University of Exeter
  • University of Queensland
  • University of Geneva
  • International Christian University
  • Claremont McKenna College
  • Australian National University
  • University of Groningen
  • Bath Spa University
  • Northwestern University
  • ISCTE - University Institute of Lisbon
  • Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
  • Eotvos Lorand University
  • Alex Ekwueme Federal University Ndufu-Alike Ikwo
  • Interuniversity Laboratory of Psychology. Personality, Cognition, Social Change
  • University of Rome La Sapienza
  • IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia - Roma
  • Ege University
  • Manisa Celal Bayar University
  • Persian Gulf University
  • University of the Basque Country
  • University of Indonesia
  • National Economics University, Hanoi
  • Mus Alparslan University
  • University of Tehran
  • Armenian State Pedagogical University after Khachatur Abovyan
  • Selcuk University
  • T. C. Nuh Naci Yazgan Universitesi
  • Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences
  • Mohammed V University in Rabat
  • Université Grenoble Alpes
  • Bursa Teknik University
  • Slovak Academy of Sciences
  • Jagiellonian University Kraków
  • Université de Toulouse
  • University of Oslo
  • Université Paris Cité
  • University College of Professional Education
  • Medical University of Gdańsk
  • Nova Southeastern University
  • Dicle University
  • Michigan State University
  • University of Lausanne
  • University of Graz
  • University of Bern
  • Harrisburg University of Science and Technology
  • Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU)
  • Bingol University

Abstract

Women are greatly underrepresented in positions of political leadership around the world. In seeking to explain this underrepresentation, some researchers have pointed to people's tendencies to stereotype leaders as more similar to men than women as these tendencies can support the belief that women are unsuited to leadership. This project aimed to test whether a subtle linguistic intervention was able to ameliorate this gender bias in political leadership stereotypes across different languages and national contexts (country/region N = 42, language N = 30, sample N = 22,996). Specifically, this project examined whether gender-fair language (e.g., the use of paired pronouns ‘he or she’) can reduce the tendency for people to stereotype political leaders as more similar to men than women. To increase the rigor with which these stereotypes were measured, this project complemented the dominant ‘cheap talk’ measure of personal stereotype content with an incentivised community measure of this content. As expected, participants stereotyped political leaders as more similar to men than women; this pattern was stronger on the incentivised measure of community stereotypes. Unexpectedly, there was no evidence that paired pronouns reduced this bias (there was weak exploratory evidence that paired nouns increased participants' tendencies to stereotype political leaders as more similar to women). This project suggests that the ability of gender-fair language interventions to ameliorate gender bias in the political leadership domain may be limited.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number101991
JournalLeadership Quarterly
Volume37
Issue number6
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2026
Peer-reviewedYes