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

Social Perception of Non-Binary Individuals

People can express their identity in different ways, one of which is through language. Non-binary individuals often speak in a gender-neutral way and use specific language forms. Language use not only reveals their identity but also can shape how others perceive them. The present study's purpose was to analyze how non-binary people are perceived through the language they use. The research was conducted in Polish, a language that is especially challenging for non-binary individuals because it has many gender markers. To avoid using gendered forms, they often use a specific form of passive voice. In an experiment, participants (N = 130, 102 women, 28 men) read a gendered (feminine or masculine) text and a gender-neutral text with passive voice. Most gave a masculine name to the person in the neutral text, but addressed them in a gender-neutral way when asked to react to them in presented scenarios. The gender-neutral text was evaluated as being less comprehensible than the gendered texts, and the non-binary person was rated less competent and colder than a man or a woman and was less socially accepted. Furthermore, the negative evaluation of non-binary people seemed to be attributable to unfamiliarity with gender-neutral language and its lower comprehensibility. More research is needed to understand these perceptions better and to be able to prevent their potential negative consequences.

Chair Versus Chairman: Does Orthopaedics Use the Gendered Term More Than Other Specialties?

BACKGROUND

Orthopaedics is the least gender-diverse medical specialty. Research suggests that the use of gendered language can contribute to workforce disparity and that gender-neutral language supports the inclusion and advancement of women, but the degree to which gender-neutral language is used by academic departments in what typically is a department's highest position (department chair) has not been characterized.

QUESTIONS/PURPOSES

(1) Is the proportion of department websites that use the term chairman (as opposed to chair) greater in orthopaedics than in five other surgical and medical specialties? (2) Are departments led by chairs who are women less likely to use "chairman" than those led by men, and does this vary by specialty?

METHODS

Seven hundred fourteen official websites of orthopaedic, neurosurgery, general surgery, internal medicine, pediatrics, and obstetrics and gynecology departments affiliated with 129 allopathic medical schools were screened. Any use of the term chairman on title pages, welcome messages, and faculty profile pages was identified using a Boyer-Moore string-search algorithm and terms were classified based on their location on the site. The overall use of the term chairman was compared by specialty and gender of the chair.

RESULTS

Sixty percent of orthopaedic department websites (71 of 119) used the term chairman at least once, a proportion higher than that of pediatrics (36% [46 of 128]; OR 0.38; 95% CI, 0.23 to 0.63; p < 0.001), internal medicine (31% [38 of 122]; OR 0.030; 95% CI, 0.18 to 0.53; p < 0.001), and obstetrics and gynecology (29% [37 of 126]; OR 0.28; 95% CI, 0.17 to 0.48; p < 0.001), but no different than that of neurosurgery (57% [54 of 94]; OR 0.91; 95% CI, 0.52 to 1.6; p = 0.74) and general surgery (55% [69 of 125]; OR 0.83; 95% CI, 0.50 to 1.4; p = 0.48). Across disciplines, departments whose chairs were women were much less likely to use the term chairman than departments whose chairs were men (14% [17 of 122] versus 50% [297 of 592]; OR 0.16; 95% CI, 0.09 to 0.28; p < 0.001).

CONCLUSIONS

The frequent use of the term chairman in orthopaedics, coupled with the preference of women to use the term chair, suggests considerable room for growth in the use of gender-equal language in orthopaedics.

CLINICAL RELEVANCE

Our current efforts to increase the number of women in orthopaedics may be undermined by gendered language, which can create and reinforce gendered culture in the field. Electing to use gender-neutral leadership titles, while a relatively small step in the pursuit of a more gender-equal environment, presents an immediate and no-cost way to support a more inclusive culture and counteract unconscious gender bias. Future studies should explore the individual attitudes of chairs regarding the use of gendered titles and identify additional ways in which biases may manifest; for example, the use of gendered language in interpersonal communications and the presence of unconscious bias in leadership evaluations. Continued efforts to understand implicit bias in orthopaedics can guide actionable strategies for counteracting gendered stereotypes of the specialty, in turn aiding initiatives to recruit and promote women in the field.

Is Man the Measure of All Things? A Social Cognitive Account of Androcentrism

Androcentrism refers to the propensity to center society around men and men's needs, priorities, and values and to relegate women to the periphery. Androcentrism also positions men as the gender-neutral standard while marking women as gender-specific. Examples of androcentrism include the use of male terms (e.g., he), images, and research participants to represent everyone. Androcentrism has been shown to have serious consequences. For example, women's health has been adversely affected by over-generalized medical research based solely on male participants. Nonetheless, relatively little is known about androcentrism's proximate psychological causes. In the present review, we propose a social cognitive perspective arguing that both social power and categorization processes are integral to understanding androcentrism. We present and evaluate three possible pathways to androcentrism deriving from (a) men being more frequently instantiated than women, (b) masculinity being more "ideal" than femininity, and/or (c) masculinity being more common than femininity.