Gender neutrality is on the rise: we live in a time where more people are using gender-neutral pronouns, stepping into gender-neutral bathrooms, giving their children gender-neutral names, and gifting them gender-neutral potato heads. And rightfully so. Gender—or the traits and characteristics that distinguish men from women—is a constricting and restricting social category. The gender binary places people into two narrow categories, upon which limiting stereotypes are applied.
Thus, the movement towards a more genderless society is understandable: its goal is to free people from the constraints of gender and allow them to exist in many ways and forms that align with how they identify. Indeed, from an identity and inequality perspective, there is a liberatory function of de-gendering, freeing people from the constraints of gender and allowing them to be in alignment with their inner, internal experience.
However, from a practical perspective, the feasibility of removing gender is less clear. As a primary way we organize society and understand ourselves and others, gender may be core to what people think of as "human." And the absence of gender information may even lead to dehumanization.
In several studies, we asked whether gender is core to seeing someone, or even something, as human.
To do this, we gave over 200 people an object (in this case, a rock), along with art supplies and fifteen minutes to paint it. Some were asked to "decorate" their rock—to use their materials to make their rock beautiful and creative. Others were asked to make their rock "come alive" and make it human-like.
When participants were told to make their rocks human-like, they (and independent observers) were highly likely to see gender in their rocks, especially when compared to other social categories such as age, race, and sexual orientation. Further, the more "human-like" both the participants and independent observers saw the rock to be, the more likely they were to see it as having a gender. Thus, gender and humanization went hand-in-hand: if it was human, it most often had a gender.
In another study, we had participants think about a robotic vacuum cleaner in human terms and then measured whether they referred to the vacuum as "he" or "she." Almost 70% used a gendered pronoun to describe the robotic vacuum, indicating that they spontaneously "saw" gender in their humanized robotic vacuum. Also, how much they "saw" gender (as well as other social categories) in their vacuum went with how human-like they thought their vacuum to be. Again, gender was the most strongly emerging social category and also the strongest predictor of humanization.
Why is gender so important in "seeing human?" Gender stereotypes—despite their restricting role—provide an efficient mental way to guide our sense of who someone is, and what they are like. Think of "Pat," a character on Saturday Night Live whose gender could not be detected. This famous skit was centered around people asking indirect questions to discern Pat's gender, so they could "understand" who Pat was and what they were like. Clearly, being male or female, and the stereotypes that go along with this distinction, are important in understanding who, exactly, Pat was.
Similarly, we believed gender stereotypes would facilitate the sense-making of another person, and lead them to be seen as more human-like. To test this, we varied the presence and absence of gender in a fictional non-human species ("the Orinthians"). Some participants read about a male alien, others read about a female alien, and some read about an alien with no sex/gender specified. They then indicated how "human-like" the alien was, as well as stereotypes related to masculinity and femininity, and how much they felt like they understood the alien—their preferences, their behavior, their intentions. Those who read about the male and female aliens rated it as more "human-like" than participants who read about the alien without a gender. Placing the target into a binary gender category brought gender stereotypes to mind that made it easier to think of the target as a person.
The Paradox of Removing Gender
This work helps show how important gender is in our social thinking. It also reveals a paradox. Most research in psychology, and much of today's social discourse, focuses on the problematic role of gender in reinforcing stereotypes and limiting opportunities. But our research shows that gender is also a humanizing force and may perhaps be core to being seen as human. It may be that recent societal changes to remove gender run afoul of deep-seated beliefs people hold about humans—that they are in possession of (a binary) gender—and that the benefits that go along with removing gender are not costless.
For Further Reading
Martin, A. E., & Mason, M. F. (2022). What does it mean to be (seen as) human? The importance of gender in humanization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 123(2), 292-315. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000293
Martin, A. E., & Slepian, M. L. (2021). The primacy of gender: Gendered cognition underlies the Big Two dimensions of social cognition. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 16(6), 1143-1158. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620904961
West, C., & Zimmerman, D. H. (1987). Doing gender. Gender & Society, 1(2), 125-151. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243287001002002
Morgenroth, T., & Ryan, M. K. (2021). The effects of gender trouble: An integrative theoretical framework of the perpetuation and disruption of the gender/sex binary. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 16(6), 1113-1142. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620902442
Ashley Martin is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford University. Her research focuses on the central role of gender in social cognition, stereotyping, and navigating inequality.
Magnifying Inequity: Women’s Lives During the COVID-19 Global Pandemic
Pushing Back Against Weight Stigma
