EXPLORING THE FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH RESISTANCE TO GENDER-FAIR LANGUAGE

Abstract

Research suggests that the use of gender-neutral pronouns reduces gender stereotyping and discrimination (Gustafsson et al., 2020). The present study examined what factors are associated with the use and resistance toward gender-fair language. Based on past research, we hypothesized that people who were younger, more liberal, and had more progressive gender attitudes would be more likely to use gender-fair language. We also hypothesized that Purchase College participants would be more likely to use gender-fair language than participants recruited online. Participants completed a fill-in-the-blank sentence task consisting of sentences that included a stereotypically male name, female name, or no name. They had to select a response to fill in the blank from three options: male role noun, female role noun, or gender-neutral role noun. As expected, participants that attended Purchase College selected the gender-fair language more frequently than the participants recruited from the internet, and more progressive gender attitude scores were associated with higher use of gender-fair language. Unexpectedly, older participants had higher use of gender-fair language than younger ones when controlling for other factors, and political ideology was unrelated to the use of gender-fair language. Keywords: gender-fair language, gender stereotyping, role-noun