(MDPI, 2025-07-21) Vela-Plo, Laura; De Pedis, Marta; Ortega-Andrés, Marina; Ciencias humanas y de la educación; Giza eta Hezkuntza Zientziak
This study examines how several gender-encoding strategies in Spanish and social factors
influence gender perception, reinforcing or mitigating a sexist male bias. Using an experimental design, we tested four linguistic conditions in a job recruitment context: masculine
forms (theoretically generic), gender-splits, epicenes, and non-binary neomorpheme “-e”.
After reading a profile in one of these conditions, 837 participants (52% women) selected
an image of a woman or man. Results show that masculine forms lead to the lowest
selection of female candidates, manifesting a male bias. In contrast, gender-fair language
(GFL) strategies, particularly the neomorpheme (les candidates), elicited the highest selection
of female images. Importantly, not only did linguistic factors and participants’ gender
identity influence results—with male participants selecting significantly more men in the
masculine condition, but affinity with feminist movements and LGBTQIA+ communities
or positive attitudes towards GFL also modulated responses—increasing female selections
in GFL, but reinforcing male selections in the masculine. Additionally, no extra cognitive
cost was found for GFL strategies compared to masculine expressions. These findings
highlight the importance, not only of linguistic forms, but of social and attitudinal factors
in shaping gender perception, with implications for reducing gender biases in language
use and broader efforts toward social equity.
