Think political leader — think he or she? A multi-country test of a gender-fair language intervention to reduce gendered leadership stereotypes

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.

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Publication Details

Journal
The Leadership Quarterly
Published
2026-09-21
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2026.101991
Primary Topic
Gender Studies in Language
Type
article
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article

Think political leader — think he or she? A multi-country test of a gender-fair language intervention to reduce gendered leadership stereotypes

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The Leadership Quarterly
Gender Studies in Language
article

Think political leader — think he or she? A multi-country test of a gender-fair language intervention to reduce gendered leadership stereotypes

Trawin Chaleeraktrakoon, Zuzanna Farny, Müge Cavdan, Cinzia Calluso, Katharina Fellnhofer, Ángela Fernández-Canseco, Erin Michelle Buchanan, Sina Eftekhari, Sharon Coen, Bojana M. Dinić, Abdelilah C. A. Charyate, Islam Borinca, Anna Dalla Rosa, Mario Muhammad Noer Fauzan, Ece Akça, Salvatore Maria Aglioti, Patrí­cia Arriaga, Pablo Castro‐Abril, Tommaso Feraco, Monika Bidzan-Wiącek, Angélica Caicedo‐Moreno, Martha Frías Armenta, Peilian Chi, Mark John Brandt, Olcay Bozkuş-Demir, Sarah Boukarras, Soufian Azouaghe, Sam Fluit, Shameem Fatima, Mehmet Fatih Bükün, Mioara Cristea, John Andre, Cécile Emery, Andrea Buscemi, Andrei Dumbravă, Sercan Balım, Nwadiogo Chisom Arinze, Renata Bongiorno, Krystian Barzykowski, Parisa Azimisefat, W. Matthew Collins, Itziar Alonso‐Arbiol, Octav Sorin Candel, Adeyemi Adetula, Leanne Boucher, Balázs Aczél, Gabriel Baník, Muhammed Şükrü Aydın, Jacek Buczny, Agustín Espinosa, Moa Bursell, Silvia Filippi, Raquel António, Thomas Rhys Evans, Ricardo Borges Rodrigues, Clare Ellen Edge, Thomas Castelain, Muhammad Mussaffa Butt, Wilson Cyrus-Lai, Nora C. G. Benningstad, Maria Giovanna Devetag, Alice H. Eagly, Paulo Roberto dos Santos Ferreira, Fabrice Brodard, Hilmar Brohmer, Raquel Meister Ko. Freitag, Ludovic Ferrand, Ilke Inceoglu, Selin Metin Camgöz, Cleno Couto, Jennifer Chavanovanich, Terence Daniel Dores Cruz, Nadia Saraí Corral-Frías, Steven Zhou, Maja Becker, Phatthanakit Chobthamkit, Bülent Aykutoğlu, Çağla Çınar, Heather M. Claypool, Julia Berenguer, Bartosz Błaszczak, Zahra Alizadeh, Uğur Arcagök, Michelle K. Ryan, Mustapha BOULAHYA, Emine Akman Direkçi, Julia Dykla, Romina Asadollahpour, Shalini Choudhary, Trac Vu Dang, Youssef El Mottaleb, Mohammed Cherradi, Simona Epure, Muhammad Fahizza Amru, Christian T. Elbaek, Gayane Alberty Asatryan, Kim Peters, Alma Jeftić, ...
article en

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.

The Leadership QuarterlyVol. 37(6)
Gender equality
Openalex Percentile: Top 27%
Gender Studies in Language
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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