Backlash Over Gender-Fair Language: The Impact of Feminine Job Titles on Men's and Women's Perception of Women

Abstract

Feminine forms of job titles raise great interest in many countries. However, it is still unknown how they shape stereotypical impressions on warmth and competence dimensions among female and male listeners. In an experiment with fictitious job titles men perceived women described with feminine job titles as significantly less warm and marginally less competent than women with masculine job titles, which led to lower willingness to employ them. No such effects were observed among women.

Full text

Journal of Language and Social Psychology
1 –11
© 2014 SAGE Publications
DOI: 10.1177/0261927X14544371
jls.sagepub.com
Article
Backlash Over Gender-Fair
Language: The Impact of
Feminine Job Titles on Men’s
and Women’s Perception of
Women
Magdalena Budziszewska1, Karolina Hansen2,
and Michał Bilewicz2
Abstract
Feminine forms of job titles raise great interest in many countries. However, it is
still unknown how they shape stereotypical impressions on warmth and competence
dimensions among female and male listeners. In an experiment with fictitious job
titles men perceived women described with feminine job titles as significantly less
warm and marginally less competent than women with masculine job titles, which led
to lower willingness to employ them. No such effects were observed among women.
Keywords
gender-fair language, impression formation, stereotype content model, social identity
theory, discrimination
“Please call me ministra,” announced the Polish Minister of Sport and Tourism, Joanna
Mucha, in one of the most influential talk shows on Polish television. Minister Mucha
used the feminine linguistic form of her governmental post, a form very rarely used in
natural Polish language. This statement garnered diverse responses in Poland’s public
discourse. Even among academics the statement was variously received: ranging from
an enthusiastic response from a feminist philosopher, Magdalena Środa, to harsh
1The Maria Grzegorzewska Academy of Special Education, Warsaw, Poland
2University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
Corresponding Author:
Karolina Hansen, Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, ul. Stawki 5/7, 00-183 Warsaw, Poland.
Email: karolina.hansen@psych.uw.edu.pl
544371JLSXXX10.1177/0261927X14544371Journal of Language and Social PsychologyBudziszewska et al.
research-article2014
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2 Journal of Language and Social Psychology
criticism from a linguist, Jerzy Bralczyk, who called this utterance “a rape on the
Polish language” (Majak, 2012).
In the current research, we address the differences between men and women in the
perception of feminine job titles. Relevant findings on job attitudes show that mascu-
line pronouns used in job descriptions differentially affect women’s and men’s ratings
of such jobs (e.g., Stericker, 1981). In our experiment we assessed whether men and
women react differently to feminine job titles, and whether their perception of femi-
nine job titles is linked to discriminatory processes.
Gender-Fair Language and Job Titles
The usage of feminine job titles deserves more attention by researchers as it becomes
one of the crucial topics in gender-related debate in many countries (Formanowicz,
Bedyńska, Cisłak, Braun, & Sczesny, 2013; Jessell & Beymer, 1992; Stericker,
1981).
Most of the research on gender-fair language has been performed on English speak-
ers. Many languages are androcentrically asymmetric: The masculine form of a word
is standard and refers to both males and females, while the feminine form is derived
from the male standard, and by using it one refers only to females (Stahlberg, Braun,
Irmen, & Sczesny, 2007). Research has shown that masculine generics evoke more
associations with males (for a review, see Stahlberg et al., 2007). Instead of saying
“musicians” or “politicians,” using parallel forms such as “male and female musi-
cians” or “male and female politicians” helps to mentally activate female exemplars of
the given category and makes females more visible (e.g., in Polish Bojarska, 2011; in
German Stahlberg, Sczesny, & Braun, 2001).
Feminine noun forms influence also perception of women described with them. An
Italian study (Merkel, Maass, & Frommelt, 2012) showed that women described with
feminine job titles (e.g., la presidentessa, female president) were perceived as having
lower status but as being warmer than women described with a masculine title (e.g., la
presidente). However, there were no differences in the perception of these women’s
competence. Furthermore, participants’ gender did not influence the effects.
A recent Polish study on fictional job titles showed that a woman with a feminine
job title was evaluated generally less favorably than a woman with a masculine title
(Formanowicz et al., 2013). Participants’ political attitudes moderated the effect:
Conservatives devalued the applicant with a feminine job title more than liberals.
Participants’ gender, however, did not influence the evaluations. Regrettably, the
study did not focus on stereotyping and did not have specific predictions about the
evaluation of women with a feminine job title on the dimensions of warmth and com-
petence. In all three studies the authors computed a single index consisting of warmth,
competence, and employability items intermixed (Formanowicz et al., 2013).
Therefore, these studies did not allow for measurement of ambivalent sexist beliefs
about warmth and competence of the applicant and insight into the possible mecha-
nisms of this discrimination as influenced by participants’ inferences about women
using feminine job titles.
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Budziszewska et al. 3
Social Identity and Stereotype Content Aspects of
Feminine Job Titles
Social identity theory proposes that when group categories are made salient, inter-
group biases become more pronounced, and outgroup perception becomes more nega-
tive and simplified (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). Feminine forms of job titles make gender
categories salient. Thus, they can lead to more pronounced social identity processes,
such as greater outgroup derogation and ingroup bias among men, whereas among
women such forms could lead to higher attempts for group affirmation (for a review
see Ellemers, Spears, & Doosje, 2002).
Gender-fair language research suggests that there are differences between men and
women in attitudes toward such language: Women opt for inclusive language, while
men prefer the more exclusive, male-generic forms (in Hong Kong English, Lee,
2007; in American English, Parks & Roberton, 2005). These general differences in
men’s and women’s reaction to feminine job titles could be particularly interesting in
the domain of stereotyping. Traditionally, psychology has treated prejudice as a uni-
form negativity toward outgroups (Allport, 1954), but more recent psychological theo-
ries distinguish different dimensions of prejudice, allowing for its ambivalent forms.
According to the stereotype content model (Cuddy, Fiske, & Glick, 2008; Fiske,
Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002), people categorize outgroups on two main dimensions—
warmth (likeability) and competence (status, power). The same aspects, sometimes
also conceptualized as affiliation and assertiveness dimension, play crucial role in the
intergender communication (Palomares, 2012). Housewives and women in traditional
gender roles are perceived as high in warmth, but low in competence (Fiske et al.,
2002). Men and women differ in their perceptions of working women on these two
dimensions. In an American study, male, but not female, participants described female
managers as negative on both competence- and warmth-related traits (Deal &
Stevenson, 1998).
Research has shown that high-status groups express generally stronger ingroup bias
than do low-status groups (e.g., Tajfel & Turner, 1986). Based on the above, we predict
that men’s reactions to feminine job titles will be negative, regardless of the stereotype
dimension or specific content. This is supported by literature on the backlash effect
(Rudman & Glick, 1999), which describes high bias against agentic women among
men exposed to a feminized job description. Among women the increased salience of
femininity (as in feminine job titles) can have different effects: for them, it can be
related to self-stereotyping and social identity management strategies. Here, making
the low-status social identity salient can lead to complementary stereotyping that
allows one to perceive losses in competence but maintain positive in-group perception
on the dimension of warmth (Jost & Kay, 2005). Based on the above arguments, we
expect that feminine job titles—by making the gender category salient—will lead to
general ingroup bias among men (on both competence and warmth dimensions), but to
more nuanced perceptions among women (lower competence but not warmth).
The content of a stereotype can have far-reaching consequences, such as specific
intergroup behaviors (Cuddy et al., 2008). In the aforementioned study by Formanowicz
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4 Journal of Language and Social Psychology
et al. (2013), a women described with a feminine job title was less readily hired than a
woman with a masculine job title. Therefore, we expected women described with fem-
inine job titles to be less employable than those with masculine job titles.
Current Research
The present experiment was designed to determine how masculine and feminine job
titles describing women shift the perception of these women on two stereotype content
dimensions: warmth and competence. We introduced an artificial job title (in its femi-
nine or masculine form) in order to avoid content-based inferences. In addition to
asking participants for warmth and competence evaluations, we assessed their behav-
ioral intentions in employing women with feminine job titles. We intended to establish
an indirect link between the linguistic utterance, stereotyping, and behavioral conse-
quences of such utterance.
Based on social identity theory, as well as stereotype content research, we hypoth-
esized that using feminine forms of fictional job titles will make women appear less
competent (than when using masculine job titles) both in the eyes of men and women
and less warm in the eyes of men. We expected also that specific stereotypes induced
among men and women could have a differential impact on discrimination of women
described using feminine job titles.
Method
Participants
Participants of the study were 123 (60 male) users of an Internet polling panel plat-
form. As age can influence attitudes toward gender-fair language (Parks & Roberton,
2005) and we did not aim at focusing on age differences, we recruited only middle-
aged participants (range: 29-40 years, M = 33.59, SD = 3.48). The sample was diverse
and included participants from various parts of Poland and representing all stages of
education.
Procedure
Participants of the online study were presented with one of two nearly identical stories,
randomly assigned. The stories were titled “In the year 2110” and started with a sen-
tence “Marta, a 42 year old woman lives in a big city and is an aborolożka by profes-
sion.” In one condition, the woman’s profession had a feminine form of a fictitious job
title (aborolożka); in the other condition, a masculine form (aborolog). The story was
followed by measures of all dependent variables.
To prevent the influence of a specific word stem, we used five different fictitious
job titles (in masculine/feminine forms): aborolog/aborolożka, hagerolog/hagerolożka,
kemelog/kemelożka, nirolog/nirolożka, nunolog/nunolożka. Each participant read
only one story with only one title. As there was no effect of any specific word stem on
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Budziszewska et al. 5
any of the dependent variables in the study (Fs < 1), we averaged the answers for all
of them.
Measures
Warmth and Competence. Attributions of warmth (warm, sensible, caring, and lov-
ing, α = .94) and competence (competent, ambitious, assertive, and strong, α = .87),
were measured on Likert-type scales from 0 = not at all to 10 = very much (Fiske et
al., 2002; in Polish Winiewski, 2010). The warmth and competence items were mixed
and presented in random order.
Employability. After participants were asked how likely they would use the occupational
service offered by the target woman and whether they would employ her (0 = definitely
not, 10 = definitely yes). As the two questions were highly correlated, r(121) = .71, p <
.001, we averaged the answers and created a composite index of discriminatory inten-
tions in employability.
Results
Competence Perceptions
In order to examine the effects of the linguistic form of the job title and the gender of
participants on perceptions of competence, we conducted a 2 (linguistic form: mascu-
line vs. feminine) × 2 (participant gender: male vs. female) between-subjects ANOVA
(analysis of variance). Results showed that, as expected, women described with femi-
nine job titles (ending with -lożka) were perceived as less competent (M = 8.03, SD =
2.53) than those described with masculine job titles (ending with -log; M = 8.70, SD =
2.68), F(1, 119) = 4.08, p = .046, ηp
2 = .03 (Figure 1). Results also showed that, over-
all, male participants evaluated all described women as less competent than did female
participants, F(1, 119) = 8.43, p = .004, ηp
2 = .06. The interaction of job title form and
gender of participants was not significant, F < 1, which shows that feminine job titles
make women appear less competent (than when using a masculine job title) in the eyes
of both men and women.
Warmth Perceptions
A similar 2 × 2 ANOVA for warmth showed that neither linguistic form of the job title
itself, F < 1, nor the gender of participants, F(1, 119) = 1.30, p = .26, ηp
2 = .01, influ-
enced warmth perceptions of the presented women (Figure 1). However, and as
expected, an interaction of linguistic form and gender of participants did influence the
evaluations, F(1, 119) = 5.53, p = .02, ηp
2 = .04. Simple effects analyses with
Bonferroni’s corrections showed that there was no significant difference between male
and female participants in perceptions of warmth of women with masculine job titles,
F < 1. However, there was a difference in warmth perceptions of women with feminine
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6 Journal of Language and Social Psychology
job titles, F(1, 119) = 6.48, p = .012, ηp
2 = .05: female participants perceived such
women as warmer than male participants did. Furthermore, male participants per-
ceived women with feminine job titles as less warm than those with masculine job
titles, F(1, 119) = 4.19, p = .043, ηp
2 = .03. Female participants did not make such a
distinction, F(1, 119) = 1.61, p = .21, ηp
2 = .01. Moreover, descriptive statistics (Figure 1)
showed that women with feminine job titles were perceived by other women as slightly
warmer than those with masculine job titles.
Indirect Effects
In order to test how feminine job titles can affect the two dimensions of stereotype
content, and how the stereotype content affects men’s and women’s intentions to
employ a women described with feminine job titles, we tested a moderated mediation
model. Employability was a dependent variable, feminine versus masculine job title
was a dichotomous independent variable, perceptions of warmth and competence were
simultaneous mediators and participant’s gender was a dichotomous moderator
(Hayes, 2013; Model 8).
The moderated mediation was tested using SPSS macro PROCESS (Hayes, 2013)
with 95% bias-corrected bootstrapped confidence interval (CI) based on 5,000 boot-
strap samples. The analysis revealed that there was no significant direct effect of lin-
guistic form on employability of women, neither among female participants, b = −0.53,
SE(boot) = 0.50, CI = [−1.52,−0.46], nor among male participants, b = 0.40, SE(boot) =
Figure 1. Mean competence (a) and warmth (b) perceptions by linguistic form of job title
(masculine, feminine) and participant gender (male, female).
Note. Error bars represent standard errors of the mean.
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Budziszewska et al. 7
0.52, CI = [−0.63, 1.43]. For female participants there was also no significant indirect
effect: neither through competence, b = −0.15, SE(boot) = 0.17, CI = [−0.59, 0.09], nor
through warmth, b = 0.32, SE(boot) = 0.25, CI = [−0.14, 0.85]. For male participants
there was an indirect effect of feminine job title on employability through warmth, b =
−0.53, SE(boot) = 0.30, CI = [−1.23, −0.03], but the indirect effect through compe-
tence did not reach significance, b = −0.28, SE(boot) = 0.21, CI = [−0.85, 0.0004]. The
overall moderated mediation test proved significant for warmth as a mediator, b =
−0.84, SE(boot) = 0.39, CI = [−1.71, −0.17], but not for competence, b = −0.14,
SE(boot) = 0.24, CI = [−0.73, 0.24].
In order to assess the specific standardized effects in the moderated mediation
model we performed a two-group (male vs. female participants) path analysis with
IBM AMOS software (Figure 2). The tested model provided a good fit to the data, χ2 =
2.04, p = .36, confirmatory fit index = .99, root mean residual = .04, root mean square
error of approximation =.01.
As earlier shown in ANOVAs, male participants who were faced with a description
of a woman with a feminine job title perceived such a woman as marginally less com-
petent (β = −0.22, p = .08) and less warm (β = −0.25, p = .046) than a woman with a
masculine job title. Deprivation of warmth and competence led to more discriminatory
intentions toward such women (for competence β = −0.35, p = .003; for warmth β =
−0.34, p = .003).
For female participants, feminine job titles did not significantly reduce perceived
competence of women described with such titles (β = −0.14, p = .28), neither did they
reduce perceived warmth of such women (β = 0.16, p = .19). However, female
-.47**
-.34**
Feminine form
of job title
Perceived
competence
Perceived
warmth
Discriminatory
intentions
-.22†
-.14
-.35**
-.22†
-.25*
.17
Figure 2. Indirect effects of feminine job titles on discriminatory intentions in employability
for male participants (standardized regression coefficients above arrows) and female
participants (below arrows).
†p < .1. *p < .05. **p < .01.
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8 Journal of Language and Social Psychology
participants’ discriminatory intentions toward women described with feminine job
titles were dependent on the perception of the described women’s warmth (β = −0.47,
p = .001) and competence (β = −0.22, p = .05).
Discussion
The current study showed that using a job title with an explicitly gender-marked word
ending to describe female professionals evokes different stereotyping of such women
in the eyes of men and women. This stereotype was a generally negative one among
men (denying competence and warmth) and a complementary one among women
(partially denying competence, but not warmth). Thus, women described using femi-
nine job titles were less competent in the eyes of men and women, but less warm only
in the eyes of men.
Such complementary process in women perceiving other women in professional
roles would be described by social identity theorists as a defensive strategy of low status
groups (e.g., Ellemers et al., 2002), whereas system justification theorists would explain
it as a hierarchy maintaining strategy among the disadvantaged (Douglas & Sutton,
2014; Kay & Jost, 2003). An alternative explanation of the observed effects can be due
to perception of women using feminine job titles as having feminist views. Some studies
suggest that feminists are often depicted as cold but competent (Berryman-Fink &
Verderber, 1985; Fiske et al., 2002). However, in our study men perceived women
described with a feminine job title as both cold and incompetent and women did not
perceive them as cold. The perception of women described with feminine job titles could
be a combination of traditional sexist depiction of women as incompetent and gender-
dependent perception of feminists: by men perceived as cold and by women as rather
warm. This factor should be included as a possible moderator in the future studies.
In the present study, we used fictional, nonexistent job titles to capture the effect of
linguistic form not influenced by attitudes toward existing, contextually rich profes-
sions. This can explain the differences between our results and those of Merkel et al.
(2012), who observed higher warmth, but not lowered competence in a similar research
in Italy. They used female forms of existing professions (e.g., female president or sol-
dier) and it is possible that participants inferred high competences from the profession
itself. Different social identity processes and stereotyping among female and male
participants had also specific consequences for discriminatory intentions toward
women described with feminine job titles. In case of female participants, the lower
perceived competence of women described with feminine job titles did not lead to
negative behavioral intentions toward such women. It seems that women’s comple-
mentary stereotyping strategy does not lead to legitimization of other women’s dis-
crimination. However, in case of male participants the negative perception of women
with feminine job titles (particularly the denial of warmth) led to discriminatory inten-
tions. This is in line with the concept of hostile sexism, stressing that men faced with
career women react with uniformly negative stereotyping that leads to resentment-
based discriminatory practices toward successful women (Glick & Fiske, 2001).
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Budziszewska et al. 9
This whole process reminds of a commons dilemma (Hardin, 1968): What is good
for a group and its members in the long term might be bad for an individual in the short
term. On the one hand, women as a group would profit if all individual women used
feminine job titles because this would make women as a group more visible, and by
frequent use make the job titles sound less unfamiliar. On the other hand, for an indi-
vidual woman a female job title comes with negative stereotypes, particularly in the
eyes of men.
Acknowledgments
We thank Adrian Wójcik, Paulina Górska, and Małgorzata Mikołajczak for their work in the
initial phase of this project. We also thank the editor Howard Giles and two anonymous review-
ers for their comments on a previous version of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by the Foundation for Polish
Science Focus grant (FNP FG 2/2009) awarded to Michał Bilewicz. Writing of this article by
Karolina Hansen was supported by Polish National Science Centre grant Fuga (DEC-2013/08/S/
HS6/00573).
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Budziszewska et al. 11
Author Biographies
Magdalena Budziszewska is an assistant professor at the Maria Grzegorzewska Academy of
Special Education in Warsaw. She studies family and biographical narratives, as well as collec-
tive emotional narratives. Linking qualitative and quantitative research methods, she also inves-
tigates linguistic aspects of social cognition.
Karolina Hansen is an assistant professor at the University of Warsaw. Her research interests
are in the fields of social psychology, sociolinguistics, and cross-cultural psychology, and
include topics such as language and accent attitudes, stereotyping, gender-fair language, linguis-
tic biases, and cross-cultural differences in social cognition.
Michał Bilewicz is an associate professor at the University of Warsaw and director of the
Center for Research on Prejudice at the same institution. He is interested in social psychology
of intergroup relations, dehumanization and infrahumanization processes, contact hypothesis
and prejudice reduction, as well as linguistic aspects of discrimination.
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