Gender Blindness: Pros, Cons and Relation to Language

Analysis by Zeina El Kojok, Visiting Contributor

January 18th, 2022

“I’m not the woman president of Harvard, I’m the president of Harvard.”
-Drew Gilpin Faust, President, Harvard University

Introduction

Over the last decade, a lot of effort has been made to promote gender equality. Many theories were introduced and studied in order to evaluate and eventually implement gender equality. One of the major ideologies introduced was gender blindness. Gender blindness, as defined by the Global Gender Statistics Program by the United Nations Statistics Division, is “the failure to recognize that the roles and responsibilities of women/girls and men/boys are ascribed to, or imposed upon, them in specific social, cultural, economic and political contexts” (UN ESCWA, 2020). In a simpler definition, gender blindness is when a person chooses not to see differences between genders.

In reality, people are treated differently depending on their gender. In an attempt to effectively promote and practice gender equality one must not ignore the factors leading to this difference in treatment which leads to oppression and victimization based on gender biases and stereotypes.

A study investigating subtle gender bias in the biological and physical sciences faculties revealed that both male and female faculty members judged a female student to be less competent and less worthy of being hired compared to an identical male student. This study also revealed that faculty members offered the female student a smaller starting salary and less career mentoring compared to the identical male student (Moss-Racusin, Dovidio, Brescoll, Graham, and Handelsman, 2012).

With gender inequality having such a tremendous impact on many socioeconomic levels, gender blindness is introduced as an ideology to overcome such gender inequalities.

Pros of Gender Blindness

Gender blindness at its very core can be seen as a way to combat sexism. Gender blindness in practice aims to ensure gender equality and protect against imposing gender roles and stereotypes that may affect the performance and quality of life of women.

In an attempt to reduce bias against and to increase the inclusion of women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) fields, six studies were conducted by Ashley E. Martin, Stanford University professor, and Katherine W. Phillips, Columbia University professor, about the importance of gender difference. These studies measured and manipulated gender-blindness and compared and contrasted gender awareness (celebrating women’s distinctive qualities) and blindness (focusing on women’s and men’s similarities).

This study revealed that gender blindness can potentially reduce the gender gap and minimize STEM stereotypes around women. Men who believe in gender blindness instead of gender awareness turned out to be more likely to disapprove and condemn stereotypes regarding women’s competence in STEM fields. This study also showed that cisgender women felt more confident when practicing gender-blindness than those who practice gender awareness. Women in male-dominated workplaces felt more comfortable taking risks when they downplay gender overall. These studies, however, only focused on white cisgender women and thus no conclusion can be derived regarding transgender women and women of color (Martin and Phillips, 2019). These findings highlight how gender blindness can in fact reduce gender inequality in certain places such as the workplace. Gender blindness addresses the confidence gap in the workplace which has a direct impact on the overall performance, salary and self-confidence. This would promote equal opportunities and equal pay for women with identical capabilities. It would also help women get promoted to higher positions depending on their competency and regardless of their gender (Martin and Phillips, 2017).

Cons of Gender Blindness

Gender blindness is sometimes considered harmful. By ignoring historical differences of genders and by equating the privileged and oppressed, further gender inequalities may be imposed due to the inconsiderate dismissal of the hardship that both genders face. 

An analogy often associated to gender blindness is color blindness. Color blindness is defined as the belief that “race-based differences should not be considered when decisions are made, impressions are formed, and behaviors are enacted” (Apfelbaum, Norton, and Sommers, 2012). A lot of research made on gender blindness used the language and tests from research done on race and color blindness. This analogy holds strongly because in both gender blindness and color blindness, differences are ignored, and privileged people get to dismiss the struggles of the oppressed.

The dismissal of race doesn’t indicate the divesting of white supremacy but instead breaking through denial is key to properly face the reality of differences. If the feminist movement was not fundamentally anti-racist, it can’t be inclusive to all women of all race and especially black women and women of color, and the movement would eventually place the interest of white women over the interest of other women (Hooks, 2000). This shows how color blindness can be sometimes deployed to hide racism and/or to evade taking responsibility of racial privileges. 

Gender blindness holds a similar weight to color blindness. Failing to see how society oppresses women means the failure to acknowledge how gender affects people’s lives all the way from how they are treated to the experiences they go through due to their gender. This allows further discrimination against women since gender blindness doesn’t make the society divert from its heteronormative cisgender framework, as is the case with color blindness and white supremacy. Instead, eliminating and denying gender differences makes it possible for society to further discriminate against women by not really capturing their image, struggles and interests.

Implementation of Gender Blindness and its Relation to Language

The pros and cons of gender blindness discussed earlier show that gender blindness can be either very beneficial or very harmful in promoting gender equality depending on how gender blindness is implemented and practiced.

With language having a great effect on gender and vice versa, it is essential to understand the relation between gender and language and ways gender blindness in language can reduce gender inequalities.

Gender is basic to language to an extent that there exists what is commonly referred to as “women’s language” and “men’s language”. Anna Livia, a researcher in the relation between language and transgenderism, examined how language constructed femininity and masculinity. For example, women’s language was often linked to using certain phrases, physical gestures and monosyllabic grunts. This language directly related femininity with speaking less frequently and showing emotions while speaking. Men’s language, on the contrary, was linked to power, anger, having low pitched voice, using less gestures and showing less emotions (Kulick, 1999).

In a study done by Kristina M. W. Mitchell at Texas Tech University and Jonathan Martin at Midland College, gender bias against women was revealed in student evaluations of teachers (SETs). By comparing the SETs of women and men professors, it was shown that women were evaluated more based on personality and appearance and less based on perception of intelligence and competency compared to other men professors. Women professors were referred to as ‘teachers’ instead of ‘professor’ much more than the men professors in both the official university course evaluation (9.2% difference) and the Rate My Professor website comments (5.5% difference). The terms used in evaluating women professors included rude, unapproachable, nice and funny which all refer to her personality bearing in mind that the students mentioning her personality were almost exclusively taking an online course with her. On the contrary, there existed a disparity between comments made by student when a male professor gave an identical online course during the same period as the female professor (Mitchell and Martin, 2018).

In addition to the SETs, gender biases in language is common and often leads to discriminatory practices against women whether in academia or any other fields. Gender blindness is considered in such cases as a potentially efficient solution to these issues.

According to a study conducted by Ashley E. Martin, Stanford University professor, and Katherine W. Phillips, Columbia University professor, women are more willing to take on certain traits such as assertiveness, confidence, risk-taking, and competitiveness if these traits are ungendered. In this case, gender blindness encourages women to be more confident and independent in the workplace and reduces gender bias in job opportunities and salaries (Martin and Phillips, 2019).

Considering the effectiveness of gender blindness in workplace, more efforts are being made to change certain gender-specific terms including pronouns, honorifics, suffixes and generic terms into gender blind terms. The main purpose of gender blindness and/or non-gendered terms in language is to make language more inclusive and expressive. This would serve as a basic tool to promote gender equality especially due to the strong relation between gender and language.

Indeed, many innovative models can be reached for understanding global processes and gender issues with future thorough research about gender blindness and language. For that, studying gender blindness and its implementation and relation to language is one of the most necessary topics to promote gender equality on a wider scale.

References

Apfelbaum, E. P., Norton, M. I., & Sommers, S. R. (2012). Racial color blindness:             Emergence, practice, and implications. Current Directions in Psychological           Science : A Journal of the American Psychological Society, 21(3), 205-    209. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721411434980

Dembroff, R., & Wodak, D. (2020). The routledge handbook of social and political            philosophy of language. Taylor and Francis.
            https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003164869

Hill Collins, P. (2000). Mammies, matriarchs, and other controlling images. (pp.    85-112). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203900055-11

Hooks, B. (2000). Race and Gender. (pp. 55-60) Feminism is for Everybody.         South End Press: Cambridge MA

Kulick, D. (1999). Transgender and language: A review of the literature and           suggestions for the future. Glq, 5(4), 605-622.
            https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-5-4-605

Martin, A. E., & Phillips, K. W. (2017). What “blindness” to gender differences       helps women see and do: Implications for confidence, agency, and action          in male-dominated environments. Organizational Behavior and Human       Decision Processes, 142, 28-44.             https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2017.07.004

Martin, A. E., & Phillips, K. W. (2019). Blind to bias: The benefits of gender-           blindness for STEM stereotyping. Journal of Experimental Social      Psychology, 82, 294-306. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2018.11.003

Mitchell, K. M. W., & Martin, J. (2018). Gender bias in student evaluations. PS,     Political Science & Politics, 51(3), 648-652.
            https://doi.org/10.1017/S104909651800001X   

Moss-Racusin, C. A., Dovidio, J. F., Brescoll, V. L., Graham, M. J., &          Handelsman, J. (2012). Science faculty's subtle gender biases favor      male students. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences –      PNAS, 109(41), 16474-                 16479. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1211286109

United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia - Statistics      Division. (2020). Global Gender Statistics Programme.
            https://archive.unescwa.org/gender-blindness

UNICEF. (n.d.). Gender Equality, https://www.unicef.org/gender-equality