Gender-inclusive language and male bias: task matters!

The use of the generic masculine has been claimed to evoke masculine representations. Specifically, job offers adopting generic masculine to describe the ideal candidate have been defined as discouraging possible female candidates. Most studies, however, base this hypothesis on responses to questions that explicitly mention the gender of the ideal candidate. The present study aims at testing whether the use of the generic masculine in a text that describes a job offer or that advertises leisure activities lead participants (N = 245) to perceive the described environment as less inclusive. Job offers and advertisements were presented in Italian in three forms. The first form involved the use of the generic masculine and the other two involved gender-inclusive strategies: the feminization strategy (i.e., adding the feminine counterpart of each gender-marked element of the sentence) and the neutralization strategy (i.e., substituting words' final morpheme with the schwa symbol). Results showed that the use of generic masculine did not make participants feel less motivated, connected, included and satisfied. Moreover, no difference was observed between the two gender-inclusive strategies, raising questions about the idea that the activation of the male bias is directly imputable to the choice of linguistic forms.