Gendered Colorism: Evidence From Social Categorization Studies

The present work documents gendered colorism using social categorization paradigms. Specifically, we document how skin tone influences gender categorization, especially for Black women relative to Black men across a diverse sample in three studies ( N = 443). We find that darker skin consistently facilitates fast and accurate racial categorization (Studies 1–3), and that skin tone has a larger effect on the accurate gender categorization of Black women versus men (Studies 1–2), with darker-skinned women being categorized the slowest and least accurately. Together, these findings suggest that gendered colorism may be most prominent when gender (but not race) is salient. They point to another way that Black women potentially experience intersectional invisibility, when their gender identity goes unrecognized and unacknowledged. Further research examining evaluative judgments is needed to examine this connection.