Ignoring Gender Compromises the Comparability of Cross-Cultural Survey Research

Survey measures of intergroup attitudes may not necessarily be comparable across countries. Androcentric bias—the propensity to position men as the universal standard—is more likely to arise among speakers of grammatically gendered languages than among speakers of languages without grammatical gender. When combined with outgroup male target bias—the tendency to evaluate outgroup men more negatively than outgroup women—androcentric bias may distort cross-national comparisons of survey measures across different language types. To evaluate, we conducted survey experiments with over 19,500 participants from 13 European countries. We randomly assigned participants to evaluate: (a) masculine or gender-neutral outgroup labels, or (b) gender-inclusive alternatives. On average, gender-inclusive labels evoked more favorable evaluations. Importantly, these positive effects were more consistently present in grammatically gendered languages. Our findings highlight potential challenges to measurement validity posed by variations in the grammatical embedding of gender across languages. Using gender-inclusive language improves measurement and may serve as a first step toward bolstering cross-national comparability.