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+--- Thread: Research New study finds gendered messaging can backfire (do-gooder data distribution) (/thread-21613.html)
New study finds gendered messaging can backfire (do-gooder data distribution) - C C - Oct 19, 2026
Psychology experiments show gender labels don’t enhance perception of women’s participation or their abilities
https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2026/october/new-study-finds-gendered-messaging-can-backfire-.html
PRESS RELEASE: Campaigns and initiatives aimed at advancing equity for girls and women often reference gender—“The future is female” or “Fight like a girl,” for instance. However, is such messaging effective in championing their abilities and in inspiring others?
A new study by a team of psychology researchers suggests it’s not. It shows that messages referencing gender in trumpeting female accomplishments in an activity can actually diminish perceptions of girls’ and women’s abilities—among children and adults of both genders. Moreover, these messages appear to reduce interest in participating in the activity itself.
“While often well-meaning, gendered messaging does not always promote more positive perceptions of women or girls—in fact, it can backfire, as our research shows,” says April Bailey, a faculty member at the University of Edinburgh and the lead author of the paper, which appears in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
“This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t celebrate women’s achievements—visibility still matters,” adds Andrei Cimpian, a psychology professor at New York University and the paper’s senior author. “What’s counterproductive is highlighting women’s gender as the reason for celebration.”
The thinking behind gendered messaging—such as “Space4Women,” “Women’s Chess Champion,” or “Coding for Girls”—is that mentioning gender sends a positive message because it shows that girls and women are active and successful in a field. However, it’s possible that it can have the opposite effect: By specifically pointing out someone’s gender, a message may suggest that girls or women are unusual or unexpected in that role—if females were seen as a normal part of the field, why mention their gender at all?
Bailey, Cimpian, and Maya Kreitman, a doctoral student in clinical psychology at the Chicago School, conducted a series of experiments to test these ideas.
How the study was conducted. The researchers asked more than 1,100 children and adults in the United States to read about made-up activities. Some participants saw descriptions that highlighted gender, such as, “A girl is the Gazzer champion,” while others saw the same information without mentioning gender, using a name instead, such as, “Joan is the Gazzer champion.” The researchers used fictional terms, such as “Gazzer,” in order to ensure that participants had no prior beliefs about who typically does the activity or how well. Any differences between the two groups, then, could only come from the way the activity was described.
In some experiments, the researchers substituted fictional groups (i.e., “Daxes”) for gender. This allowed them to determine if messaging about groups in general is problematic or, rather, if it’s messaging about familiar groups (like gender) that can backfire.
What the researchers found. Overall, the results showed that explicitly mentioning gender often backfired. Compared with using a person’s name, gender-focused descriptions led female and male participants to believe that fewer women took part in the activity. Both female and male adults were also more likely to say that women were less capable in that activity. In addition, those who read the gender-focused descriptions expressed less interest in the activities themselves.
The researchers found that these effects were stronger in adults than in children, suggesting that adults are more likely to read between the lines—inferring that highlighting gender means someone is unusual in that setting. Notably, the effect disappeared when the messages referred to fictional groups instead of real-world genders, indicating that people’s existing beliefs about women and men play an important role.
What the findings mean. The findings indicate that efforts to promote gender equality can sometimes have unintended consequences, the authors conclude.
“Our study shows that subtle communicative inferences can cause well-intentioned gendered messaging to undermine its own goals, and it suggests that, contrary to intuition, gender labels don’t simply add positive information about women’s participation and abilities,” says Cimpian.
“Rather than emphasizing that an achievement is by or for women, it may be more effective to simply show women succeeding in these fields without making gender the focus,” advises Bailey.
RE: New study finds gendered messaging can backfire (do-gooder data distribution) - Syne - Oct 19, 2026
Making a point to mention gender would tend to suggest that some accomplishment was only impressive "for that gender."
RE: New study finds gendered messaging can backfire (do-gooder data distribution) - confused2 - Oct 20, 2026
From AI
"Only around 20% of SpaceX employees are women"
We live inside the bouba-kiki effect.
https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21591.html
RE: New study finds gendered messaging can backfire (do-gooder data distribution) - Zinjanthropos - Oct 20, 2026
(Yesterday 10:50 AM)confused2 Wrote: From AI
"Only around 20% of SpaceX employees are women"
We live inside the bouba-kiki effect.
https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21591.html
#1 employee is Gwynne Shotwell, worth approx $3bn. One of the wealthier women on the planet. I would think that not much doesn’t go past her desk, if it’s SpaceX related.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwynne_Shotwell
Excerpt:
Quote: At the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing on September 28, 2018, Shotwell's talk was titled "Launching Our Future" and she discussed her vision and advancements for aerospace technology, as well as why diversity and the inclusion of women are necessary to advance as a society.
RE: New study finds gendered messaging can backfire (do-gooder data distribution) - confused2 - Oct 20, 2026
I'm not suggesting a boubas are a handicap .. but the way things actually are.. looking at (for example) contributors to Mozilla open source code .. I'd say there's less than 20% with the boubas. That's just doing it for fun .. no cost and no reward.
https://www.mozilla.org/credits/
RE: New study finds gendered messaging can backfire (do-gooder data distribution) - Yazata - Oct 21, 2026
This thread reminds me of dancing bears. It isn't that they dance well. It's that they dance at all.
If we are asked to "celebrate" a woman in whatever field, just because she's a woman in that particular field, it's kind of suggesting that a woman successfully doing it is an occasion for celebration. And that's a condescending message.
(Yesterday 10:50 AM)confused2 Wrote: From AI
"Only around 20% of SpaceX employees are women"
None of Elon's companies are known for woke hiring. (He's one of the most prominent opponents of woke.) Nor are his companies known for discriminatory hiring.
If SpaceX is hiring for an engineering position, I'm sure that women are encouraged to apply. But hiring will be on the engineering merits. The best person for the position will be hired.
There are a number of very prominent female engineers at SpaceX. (From Gwynne on down.) But none of them were hired because they were women. (Nor were they hired in spite of being women.) They were hired because they were good at what they do.
And I'm sure that's how all of them want to be perceived.
RE: New study finds gendered messaging can backfire (do-gooder data distribution) - Zinjanthropos - Oct 21, 2026
It just pisses me off to have brain power wasted by societies or cultures that don’t allow for women to participate in the advancement of human race. How many great minds never got a chance to contribute. Absolutely no good reason to suppress brain power.