This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Campaigns and initiatives aimed at advancing equity for girls and women often reference gender—"The future is female" or "Fight like a girl," for instance. However, is such messaging effective in championing their abilities and in inspiring others?
A new study by a team of psychology researchers suggests it's not. It shows that messages referencing gender in trumpeting female accomplishments in an activity can diminish perceptions of girls' and women's abilities—among children and adults of both genders. Moreover, these messages appear to reduce interest in participating in the activity itself.
"While often well-meaning, gendered messaging does not always promote more positive perceptions of women or girls—in fact, it can backfire, as our research shows," says April Bailey, a faculty member at the University of Edinburgh and the lead author of the paper, which appears in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. "This doesn't mean we shouldn't celebrate women's achievements—visibility still matters," adds Andrei Cimpian, a psychology professor at New York University and the paper's senior author. "What's counterproductive is highlighting women's gender as the reason for celebration." The thinking behind gendered messaging—such as "Space4Women," "Women's Chess Champion" or "Coding for Girls"—is that mentioning gender sends a positive message because it shows that girls and women are active and successful in a field.
However, it's possible that it can have the opposite effect: By specifically pointing out someone's gender, a message may suggest that girls or women are unusual or unexpected in that role—if females were seen as a normal part of the field, why mention their gender at all? Bailey, Cimpian and Maya Kreitman, a doctoral student in clinical psychology at the Chicago School, conducted a series of experiments to test these ideas. The researchers asked more than 1,100 children and adults in the United States to read about made-up activities.
Some participants saw descriptions that highlighted gender, such as "A girl is the Gazzer champion," while others saw the same information without mentioning gender, using a name instead, such as "Joan is the Gazzer champion." The researchers used fictional terms, such as "Gazzer," to ensure that participants had no prior beliefs about who typically does the activity or how well. Any differences between the two groups, then, could only come from the way the activity was described. In some experiments, the researchers substituted fictional groups (i.e., "Daxes") for gender.
This allowed them to determine if messaging about groups in general is problematic or, rather, if it's messaging about familiar groups (like gender) that can backfire. Overall, the results showed that explicitly mentioning gender often backfired. Compared with using a person's name, gender-focused descriptions led female and male participants to believe that fewer women took part in the activity.
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