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Publication Detailed Description
Think political leader — think he or she? A multi-country test of a gender-fair language intervention to reduce gendered leadership stereotypes
Journal Title
The Leadership Quarterly
Year (definitive publication)
2026
Language
English
Country
United States of America
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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.
Acknowledgements
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Keywords
Fields of Science and Technology Classification
- Psychology - Social Sciences
- Political Science - Social Sciences
Funding Records
| Funding Reference | Funding Entity |
|---|---|
| APVV-23-0421 | Agentúra na podporu výskumu a vývoja |
| P2022M9EKK | Italian Ministry for Universities and Research |
| APVV-23-0548 | Slovak Research and Development Agency |
| 301010M23助人007 | Norwegian Research Council |
| SCOPIL-ANR-23-CE28-0012 | Research Laboratory of Applied Sociology |
| UIDB/03125/2020 | Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia |
| IT1598-22 | Basque Government Research Groups |
| M23助人007 | Murata Science Foundation Research |
| ANR-18-IDEX-0001 | Université Paris Cité |
| ANR-23-CE28-0012 | French National Research Agency |
| 725128 | Comissão Europeia |
| DALL_BIRD23_02 | University of Padua |
| MYRG-GRG2024-00269-FSS | University of Macau |
| 451-03-137/2025-03/200165 | Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovations of the Republic of Serbia |
| IT1797-26 | Basque Government Research Groups |
| Vi.Vidi.195.137 | Dutch Research Council |
| 2024/55/B/HS6/01797 | National Science Center |
| 56220079 | Fulbright–Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo |
| MUNI/A/1622/2024 | Masaryk University |
| 2024/54/E/HS6/00233 | National Science Center |
| 502774891-ORA | UNTOUCH Einstein Foundation |
| ERC-CoG-865931 | Comissão Europeia |
| 288083 | Norwegian Research Council |
| MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 | Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation |
| PID2020-115738GB-I00 | Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation |
| 865931 | Comissão Europeia |
| PRIN 2022 PNRR23 | Italian Ministry for Universities and Research |
| UIDB/03125/2025 | Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia |
| CZ.02.01.01/00/22_008/0004583 | Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic |
| ERU-2023-782 | UNTOUCH Einstein Foundation |
| 423/1-3-01 | University of Niš – Faculty of Philosophy |
| IGA_FF_2024_001 | Being Human Incubator Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports |
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