Are Gender-Neutral Pronouns Really Neutral? Testing a Male Bias in the Grammatical Genderless Languages Turkish and Finnish

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Date

2023

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Sage Publications inc

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Department of Psychology
(2004)
The Atılım University Department of Psychology was founded in the year 2004, and is the first Department of Psychology at the Foundation Schools of Ankara. Our undergraduate program is accredited by FEDEK (The Association for Evaluation and Accreditation of University Programs in Mathematical, Natural and Social Sciences) until 2026. The aim of the department is to raise individuals who are experienced in psychological research and practices and equipped with professional ethics and theoretical knowledge. Our department allows our students to take courses in line with their interests and career goals with our wide range of elective courses on the sub-fields of psychology.

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Abstract

Languages differ in how grammatically salient gender is. We explored if grammatically gender-neutral pronouns in Finnish and Turkish, two grammatically genderless languages, are gender neutral or male biased, thereby activating male, rather than female, exemplars. We also tested whether differences in national level gender equality influence the male bias. Results indicated a male bias in both languages, whereas national level gender equality had no influence. Implications for gender-fair language reforms in grammatically genderless languages are discussed.

Description

Renstrom, Emma/0000-0001-6593-2464; Hekanaho, Laura/0000-0002-1064-6871

Keywords

pronouns, genderless languages, male bias, Finland, Turkey

Turkish CoHE Thesis Center URL

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1

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Q1

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Q1

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Volume

42

Issue

4

Start Page

476

End Page

487

URI

https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X221146229
 https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14411/2400

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