Sexist Bias Research Articles

Do Attitudes towards Gender Equality Influence the Internalization of Ambivalent Sexism in Adolescence?

Sexism during adolescence may hinder the attainment of gender equality and the eradication of violence against women. The aim of this research was to analyze the relationship between an individual's view on gender equality and the internalization of ambivalent sexism, as well as to study the impact of different types of egalitarian attitudes (sociocultural, relational, and personal) on the levels of hostile and benevolent sexism among the adolescent population. A quantitative approach with a cross-sectional design was employed in this research. The sample group consisted of 1840 students (50.1% female and 49.9% male) in Compulsory Secondary Education in Castilla-La Mancha, Spain. The results show that adolescents who endorse pro-gender-inequality attitudes exhibit greater levels of hostile and benevolent sexism than their counterparts. Conversely, adolescents adopting pro-equality attitudes leads to lower levels of ambivalent sexism. In both male and female adolescents, egalitarian attitudes at the sociocultural, relational, and individual levels have a negative impact on the internalization of sexism. It is therefore crucial for both schools and families to prioritize the instruction of egalitarian values from early childhood, as this will aid in advancing a fairer and more equal society whilst eradicating sexist biases and violence against women.

Contrasting Linguistic Patterns in Human and LLM-Generated News Text

We conduct a quantitative analysis contrasting human-written English news text with comparable large language model (LLM) output from six different LLMs that cover three different families and four sizes in total. Our analysis spans several measurable linguistic dimensions, including morphological, syntactic, psychometric, and sociolinguistic aspects. The results reveal various measurable differences between human and AI-generated texts. Human texts exhibit more scattered sentence length distributions, more variety of vocabulary, a distinct use of dependency and constituent types, shorter constituents, and more optimized dependency distances. Humans tend to exhibit stronger negative emotions (such as fear and disgust) and less joy compared to text generated by LLMs, with the toxicity of these models increasing as their size grows. LLM outputs use more numbers, symbols and auxiliaries (suggesting objective language) than human texts, as well as more pronouns. The sexist bias prevalent in human text is also expressed by LLMs, and even magnified in all of them but one. Differences between LLMs and humans are larger than between LLMs.

Implicit Sexist Bias in Language and its Impact on Artificial Intelligence

Implicit Sexist Bias in Language and its Impact on Artificial Intelligence

Leveraging multiple digital footprint datasets to predict racial, sex-based, and sexual-orientation bias across US states

Introduction & BackgroundRacial, gender, and sexual-orientation biases are pervasive throughout society. Importantly, modern digitally oriented datasets can elucidate important societal variables and potential solutions. One contemporary theory that attempts to explain these biases is parasite-stress: an evolutionary psychology hypothesis suggesting that increased infectious diseases rates increase out-group biases. We present preliminary findings that suggest that disease rates are a meaningful geospatial predictor of multiple biases. Objectives & ApproachWe explored biases using geospatial analyses throughout multiple datasets based on US participants: Project Implicit, American National Election Studies (ANES), Google Trends, and Twitter/X. We included state-based variables to compare between states and assess the most important environmental-level predictors of biases. We built generalised linear and linear mixed-effect models and general linear models. Within Project implicit (n > 3,000,000) and ANES datasets (n > 30,000), we assessed racial and sexual-orientation biases via explicit and implicit measures. For Google Trends and Twitter/X datasets, we assessed racial and sex-based biases via search and tweet-per-state scores. To analyse the biases, we included environmental-level variables, e.g., infectious disease rates (developed by Thornhill and Fincher in 2014), and individual-level variables, e.g., political orientation. Relevance to Digital FootprintsThese preliminary findings analyse everyday people’s online behaviour including volunteered surveys, searches and posts. We attempt to address the pressing societal issue of bias by leveraging modern datasets. Our primary goal is to aid policy makers by recommending cost-effective solutions that can improve several factors of the population’s quality of life. ResultsWe find that the most consistently significant predictor of racial bias is infectious disease rates. When leveraging Google Trends data including anti-women terminology, infectious disease rates and population density are consistent predictors of bias. Finally, we find preliminary results suggesting that increased levels of infectious diseases increases homophobic bias. Conclusions & ImplicationsOverall, we find that as infectious disease rates increase in a state, the level of racial and sexist bias significantly increases. Consistent with parasite-stress theory, we argue that focusing on reducing infectious disease rates in an area can have a plethora of benefits including improving physical and mental health and reducing biases that damage society.

Researching Gender and Disasters of Natural Origin: Ethical Challenges

Ethical issues are very relevant in the field of women’s, gender and/or feminist studies. The aim of this article is to highlight the ethical challenges faced by the authors in their research process, with specific reference to two projects on gender and disasters in which they have been involved. In general, we try to avoid sexist bias throughout the complete research process, from the definition of the objectives themselves to the methodology design, where we ensure diversity in the selection of participants in order to take into consideration the variety of voices present in society, especially those of women. Also, when developing our research, we take into account the power relationships involved, both between those who participate in the fieldwork and with the researchers themselves. To counteract the effects of such relations, we have considered people’s wellbeing and the humanization of the whole process. Finally, when it comes to the dissemination of the results and their transfer to society at large, we follow the same principles and actively integrate the people involved. Considering these issues benefits the research process and makes the resultant knowledge more ethical and socially useful, in addition to promoting more egalitarian gender relations.

The Goals of Medicine: Debate and Disagreements Around Contraceptive Side Effects.

Since the invention of hormonal contraceptives, there has been disagreement between users and providers about the existence of side effects and their implications for care. The lack of consideration for cisgender women, and other people who may become pregnant, has often been explained by sexist bias in the philosophy of medicine. My goal is to contribute additional elements to this discussion. I will argue that there are structurally embedded assumptions about the responsibilities and goals of medicine that open the door to this sexism in the first place. While we tend to accept that contraception is part of medicine for pragmatic reasons, we do not exhibit the same form of pragmatism when it comes to dealing with side effects. This is an unjustified double standard that fails to recognize the goals of contraception and the fact that it relies on medical expertise to achieve them.

Bias Seksisme dalam Penulisan Berita Olahraga

This article reveals sexist bias in reporting on the 2018 Asian Games event on the online media Liputan6.
 com. The theoretical basis used is the theory of commodification, gender theory and feminism and representation. 
 The research method takes into account Sara Mills’s critical discourse analysis, with news subjects selected 
 purposively with a sexual bias. The results of the study reveal that the bias occurs through the representation of 
 women who have been reduced in such a way that they only construct female athletes as beautiful aesthetic objects. 
 Women are selected, defined, and displayed as objects and it no longer corresponds to the relevance of sports 
 reporting. This reduction occurs both in texts and in visual image displays.

Not just in the past: Racist and sexist biases still permeate biology, anthropology, medicine, and education.

In the past decades, it has been increasingly recognized that some areas of science, such as anthropology, have been plagued by racist, Western-centric, and/or sexist biases. Unfortunately, an acculturation process to racism and sexism has been occurring for generations leading to systemic inequities that will take a long time to disappear. Here, we highlight the existence of current examples of how racism, Western-centrism and sexism within: (1) the most popular anatomical atlases used in biological, anthropological and medical education; (2) prominent natural history museums and World Heritage Sites; (3) biological and anthropological scientific research publications; and (4) popular culture and influential children's books and educational materials concerning human biology and evolution.

Equal accuracy for Andrew and Abubakar—detecting and mitigating bias in name-ethnicity classification algorithms

Uncovering the world’s ethnic inequalities is hampered by a lack of ethnicity-annotated datasets. Name-ethnicity classifiers (NECs) can help, as they are able to infer people’s ethnicities from their names. However, since the latest generation of NECs rely on machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), they may suffer from the same racist and sexist biases found in many AIs. Therefore, this paper offers an algorithmic fairness audit of three NECs. It finds that the UK-Census-trained EthnicityEstimator displays large accuracy biases with regards to ethnicity, but relatively less among gender and age groups. In contrast, the Twitter-trained NamePrism and the Wikipedia-trained Ethnicolr are more balanced among ethnicity, but less among gender and age. We relate these biases to global power structures manifested in naming conventions and NECs’ input distribution of names. To improve on the uncovered biases, we program a novel NEC, N2E, using fairness-aware AI techniques. We make N2E freely available at www.name-to-ethnicity.com.

The Person of the Author: Constructing Gendered Scholars in Religious Studies Book Reviews

Abstract This article uses quantitative and qualitative methods to explore persistent gender biases in fifteen years of book reviews in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion (2006–2020). The JAAR has historically reviewed books by men and relied on male reviewers out of proportion to their share of the academy’s membership. Although these rates have shifted toward balance over time, sexist biases in reviewers’ language and citation practices persist. In keeping with other research on gendered agency in language, we find that reviewers of all genders emphasize male scholars’ expertise and esteem and disproportionately refer to male thinkers and their ideas in reviews, with male reviewers also citing work by men at a much higher rate. We argue that these practices, which both reflect and compound existing inequalities in the field of religious studies as well as in academia and society broadly, should be changed and suggest some strategies for reviewers, editors, and journals to adopt.

Neurofeminism: Feminist critiques of research on sex/gender differences in the neurosciences.

Over the last three decades, the human brain and its role in determining behavior have been receiving a growing amount of attention in academia as well as in society more generally. Neuroscientific explanations of human behavior or other phenomena are often especially appealing to lay people. Therefore, neuroscientific explanations that can affect individuals, groups, or social relations in general should be formulated in a careful and responsible way. One field in which especially feminist scholars request more caution is the neuroscientific examination of sex/gender differences. Feminist scholars have described various ways in which sexist bias might be present in neuroscientific research on sex/gender differences. In this context, they coined the term "neurosexism" to describe the entanglement between neuroscientific work and sexist ideology, and "neurofeminism" as a response to that. Here, we aim to give an overview over the contemporary neurofeminist literature. In the first part, common levels of analysis in the neurofeminist literature are presented and the research level is explored in more detail. In the second part, some common developments in more recent neurofeminist scholarship are discussed. For this, we review recent publications with the aim to provide neuroscientists with a solid understanding of neurofeminist criticism so that they may evaluate neuroscientific claims about on sex/gender differences from this critical perspective.

Dispirited Away: The Peer Review Process

Dispirited Away: The Peer Review Process

Towards a decolonial feminist fashion design reading list

Although reading lists are an important part of curricula and play an essential role in decolonizing education, the work to diversify them can often neglect intersectional approaches that consider both racialized and gendered dimensions of knowledge construction. The consequence can be an additive approach in which black authors and authors of colour are included to diversify reading lists, reproducing racist and sexist biases. This paper examines how reading lists are constructed in curricula and presents an alternative decolonial feminist approach to creating a reading list in fashion design. The value of decolonial feminism lies in addressing the gaps in thinking by using a racializedandgendered framework. The Decolonizing the Curriculum Toolkit project at Westminster University, UK is introduced to which the author contributed a Decolonising Fashion Design Reading List, as an example of counter-hegemonic curricula which aimed to reveal the unequal power dynamics that support colonial logics in fashion design education. Exposing hegemonic distinctions in fashion that represent Western fashion as modern and non-Western fashion as traditional can then allow marginalized and excluded fashion narratives to become centred. Such an approach can then provide a key tool towards building a more pluralised and de-hierarchised set of fashion design resources.

Online memes in Kenyan social media plat forms as a modality of negotiating gender-based violence in androcentric political contexts

This paper examines the re-production of images of gendered political bodies in digital scapes, and how these online forms participate in meaning-making of gender-based violence. The paper reads body images of (wo)men in politics, featured in online memes, as signs embodying society’s negotiation of gender-based violence in an androcentric political culture. It finds that both online and offline Kenyan political discourses generated by mainstream and subversive political discourses portray the female body as a subordinate category around which three notions of marginalisation are produced: the trivialised body, the violated body, and the sexualised body, all products of patriarchal and sexist biases. Online memes are of particular interest because they are means by which the current generation of young Kenyans engage in public discourses in ways that reflect ongoing popular discourses on gender in non-official publics.

Sari, Femininity, and Wall Art: A Semiotic Study of GuessWho’s Street Art in Bengaluru

Graffiti has been conversing with the public for millions of years. In India, this art form is prominent in spaces like historical monuments, schools, colleges, classrooms, public bathrooms, benches, desks, and local transports. With the coming of the Covid 19 pandemic, this art from the streets has come alive in people’s smartphones. This paper explores and interprets the works of GuessWho, a prominent stencil graffiti artist working in the city of Bengaluru, Karnataka, and originally belonging to Kochi, Kerala. This study seeks to understand how the discourse around graffiti can help empower women in their struggle to claim the streets. By focusing on Instagram as a medium of social resistance, the paper explores the role of graffiti and social media in challenging the patriarchal status quo. Semiotics is used to understand the ways in which the production and consumption of forms of street art and graffiti are increasingly shaping the way Bengaluru city negotiates with gender. GuessWho’s graffiti symbolically targets and contests gender discrimination and particularly challenges some of the existing classist, racist, or sexist biases by subverting the use of sari, technology, and gender roles in the artwork.

Where Exactly Does the Sexist Bias in the Official Measurement of Monetary Poverty in Europe Come From?

This article aims to round out the well-established criticism in feminist research whereby measuring income poverty at household level tends to underestimate poverty among women. It demonstrates that while this indicator is underpinned by a conceptual bias that could be qualified as sexist, this is not only because of measurement at the household level, but rather the manner in which this is measured and because it is the only independent item of individual income factored into the measurement of poverty risk. A number of suggestions for improvements are made although, without more detailed research in liaison with Eurostat or national statistical institutes, it will be difficult to make progress in this area. JEL classification: D31, D13, B54

Our guests: “We must educate algorithms”

Sexist algorithms? The question may seem odd. Coded by humans, the algorithms used by artificial intelligence are not free of stereotypes. But while they can induce sexist or racist biases, they can also be used to advance the cause of gender equality. This is what Aude Bernheim and Flora Vincent demonstrate in their book, L’Intelligence artificielle, pas sans elles! (Artificial intelligence, not without women!).

Feminismos y género en los Estudios Internacionales

En las últimas décadas, el rol específico de las mujeres en las relaciones internacionales ha recibido más atención y las teorías feministas han ganado terreno en el debate intelectual, lo que ha contribuido a una sensibilización general hacia la incorporación del análisis de la categoría de género en la disciplina de las Relaciones Internacionales. De hecho, uno de los rasgos característicos de la disciplina había sido la invisibilización de las estructuras de género que impactan a hombres y mujeres de forma distinta. Sin embargo, con la irrupción del llamado “cuarto debate” se abrió una nueva oportunidad para pensar lo internacional desde miradas más críticas e inclusivas. El impacto de los estudios feministas tuvo lugar a finales de la década de 1980 con una publicación especial sobre género en la revista académica Millennium: Journal of International Studies. De gran relevancia en la actualidad son las teorías producidas fuera de los centros hegemónicos y que cuestionan tanto las teorías clásicas como el sistema de género occidental por encubrir un proyecto etnocéntrico. En efecto, las teóricas post y decoloniales pretenden desestabilizar los discursos hegemónicos sobre una supuesta experiencia universal de las mujeres. En este sentido, el objetivo central del presente artículo es realizar una revisión bibliográfica sobre las principales escuelas feministas, así como sistematizar la pluralidad de teorías y de prácticas feministas que han tenido lugar en el devenir de los estudios internacionales. De esta forma, tras una breve introducción sobre el surgimiento de los enfoques feministas en la disciplina, el presente estudio realiza un análisis de las aportaciones de las principales escuelas feministas: el feminismo liberal, el feminismo del punto de vista, el feminismo constructivista, el feminismo posmodernista, el feminismo postcolonial, el feminismo decolonial, la teoría queer y el enfoque sobre las masculinidades. A través del examen de estas diferentes corrientes teóricas, se analizará su impacto en la disciplina de las Relaciones Internacionales, evidenciando los cambios epistemológicos, metodológicos y ontológicos presentes en las diferentes escuelas. Las teorías feministas en las Relaciones Internacionales deben ser abordadas, pues, de manera multidimensional, en el sentido de reconocer las diferencias y elementos comunes respecto a las experiencias de las mujeres, hombres y disidentes sexuales desde diferentes latitudes.

A feminist analysis of child neglect cases from the Brazilian Superior Court of Justice

Abstract This article analyzes the opinions of judges of the Brazilian Superior Court of Justice (STJ) in child neglect cases from a feminist perspective by “asking the woman question” to identify implicit male bias in legal concepts and standards that are apparently gender neutral. Several sexist arguments can be found both in opinions against awarding damages for child neglect and in opinions in favor of it. Sexist bias is shown in the disregard of legal doctrine, as well as of the ambivalent character of family relations and their hierarchical structure. This bias is further expressed in the devaluation of women’s interests and life experiences, stereotyping, problems of logical reasoning as well as in the disregard of statutory rules. The article concludes that the STJ was unable to take into account the point of view of women and the circumstances in which child neglect actually takes place in Brazilian society today. The court developed a concept of harm that, although apparently gender neutral, is based on discriminatory reasons and has greater negative impact on women than on men.

“Let me hear Thy voice”: Michèle Roberts’s Refiguring of Mary Magdalene in the Light of The Song of Songs

The article engages with the protagonist of The Secret Gospel of Mary Magdalene by Michèle Roberts, first published in 1984 as The Wild Girl. Filipczak discusses scholarly publications that analyze the role of Mary Magdalene, and redeem her from the sexist bias which reduced her to a repentant whore despite the lack of evidence for this in the Gospels. The very same analyses demonstrate that the role of Mary Magdalene as Christ’s first apostle silenced by patriarchal tradition was unique. While Roberts draws on the composite character of Mary Magdalene embedded in the traditional association between women, sexuality and sin, she also moves far beyond this, by reclaiming the female imaginary as an important part of human connection to the divine. At the same time, Roberts recovers the conjunction between sexuality and spirituality by framing the relationship of Christ and Mary Magdalene with The Song of Songs, which provides the abject saint from Catholic tradition with an entirely different legacy of autonomy and expression of female desire, be it sexual, maternal or spiritual. The intertext connected with The Song of Songs runs consistently through The Secret Gospel of Mary Magdalene. This, in turn, sensitizes the readers to the traces of the Song in the Gospels, which never quote from it, but they rely heavily on the association between Christ and the Bridegroom, while John 20 shows the encounter between the risen Christ and Mary Magdalene in the garden whose imagery is strongly suggestive of the nuptial meeting in The Song of Songs.