Professor delivers talk on the role of gender in language

In the United States, economists believe that over time, the gender wage gap has declined, although it has not gone away completely. According to Efrén Pérez, these gender inequalities persist because of patriarchal attitudes and beliefs that promote and reinforce women’s unequal status in society.

Pérez, an associate professor of political science at Vanderbilt University, discussed the effect of gendered languages toward gender equality at the Department of Political Science’s event Monday at the Von KleinSmid Center. Pérez talked about various studies that show the effects of language perspective on gender equality. 

Pérez is the co-director of the Department of Political Science’s Research on Individuals, Politics, & Society at Vanderbilt University. His research includes studies on political psychology, public opinion and racial and ethnic politics. He has published several papers on the relationship between language and survey response, group identity, identity threat and political response. He is also the author of Unspoken Politics: Implicit Attitudes and Political Thinking.

The focus and motivation of Pérez’s research were the persistent levels of gender disparity seen across the world. Pérez said that development should reduce and possibly eliminate these gender imbalances, which was not the case every time.

“We know that in many areas of the world gender inequalities continue in spite of greater socioeconomic development,” Pérez said.

Pérez added that these attitudes exist even in highly developed countries.

“These gender disparities die hard, and this is especially so in the case of politics where women continue to be underplaced in positions of high prestige and power,” Pérez said. “These asymmetrical attitudes served to negatively impact the social, the economic and the political outcomes of females in many societies.”

Pérez said that this type of thinking can come from the language that a person speaks. Gendered language may affect speakers’ perceptions of men and women, according to Pérez.

“Speaking a genderless tongue should help to promote greater perceived equity between men and women,” Pérez said. “Speakers of a genderless tongue are less sensitive to these male-female distinctions.”

Pérez talked about various studies that showed the effect of different languages on perceptions of time and space. Pérez said that the differences can map on to performance on non-cognitive or nonverbal tasks.

“Language can affect our thinking spontaneously, without our active direction and many times under our full level of awareness,” Pérez said. “These language effects do not require articulation or verbalization.”

Pérez said that political thinking is a peculiar mode of cognition, and most people tend to construct opinions on the spot.

“For a speaker of a gendered language like Spanish, gender as a consideration should be relatively more strongly activated,” Pérez said. “For a speaker of a genderless language, gender as a consideration is going to be less strongly activated.”

Naveen Katam, a graduate student studying electrical engineering, said he was surprised to learn that language can have an effect on what we think about gender equality.

“Even the concept of thinking that [languages] can affect is the first thing that I have learned,” Katam said. “I always thought people have one opinion, no matter what language they speak. It’s something which is so complex … how it affects and spans the range of your own values and perceptions.”

Pérez also talked about various studies that looked at whether language plays an important role in public attitudes toward gender equality. The results showed that people who spoke a genderless language were more supportive of a female nominee for defense minister and were more likely to agree with increase in female political recruitment.

These studies also showed that people who spoke genderless languages at home were more inclined toward gender equality.

“I think what we have is a converging evidence that a language one speaks can affect what one thinks about gender equality,” Pérez said. “Social pressure more generally might actually serve as the possible moderator of the types of language effects that we recorded.”