Description

The issues of gender roles, gender development and gender equality have been subject to research for several decades. Many studies have shown that traditional gender roles still prevail, if to a lesser extent than in past decades. Also indices of gender equality still point to gaps in the economic and political participation of female and male persons. Communication is an important means of transmitting and preserving gender-stereotypical beliefs. To increase our knowledge about gender fairness, the present research examined two ways in which communication may foster or decrease gender stereotypes and gender-unfairness: educational material and individual language use. Inspired by feminist movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s, first studies investigated the gender depictions in books for children. They criticised an overall predominance of male characters. The present dissertation aimed at providing data from currently used schoolbooks by analysing gender depictions and gender-related language in schoolbooks for Germany and England. Results revealed that the depictions in German schoolbooks tend to be more balanced, while English educational material contains considerable imbalances. The second part of the present research focused on the individual level and investigated the use of gender-(un)fair language. Studies on gender-fair language have shown that gender-fair forms enhance the cognitive representation of female persons and reduce gender stereotypes. Therefore we conducted several experiments investigating the language use of participants and possible influencing variables. Results revealed that attitudes, intentions, and frequency of past behaviour are relevant predictors for the use of gender-fair language. The general discussion summarises the main results of the present studies, sketches aspects that are relevant for future research and describes practical implications for the social construction of gender-fairness.

Project Details

Project Type

Dissertation

Subject Group

Law, Economics and Social Sciences

End

2013

Organization

Faculty/Central Institute

Education and Psychology

Field/Work Area

Department of School and Teaching Research

Project Team

Director

Dr. Franziska Moser

Publications

https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/12511

Researchers

• Dr. Franziska Moser

  Former