English colour terms carry gender and valence biases: A corpus study using word embeddings

In Western societies, the stereotype prevails that pink is for girls and blue is for boys. A third possible gendered colour is red. While liked by women, it represents power, stereotypically a masculine characteristic. Empirical studies confirmed such gendered connotations when testing colour-emotion associations or colour preferences in males and females. Furthermore, empirical studies demonstrated that pink is a positive colour, blue is mainly a positive colour, and red is both a positive and a negative colour. Here, we assessed if the same valence and gender connotations appear in widely available written texts (Wikipedia and newswire articles). Using a word embedding method (GloVe), we extracted gender and valence biases for blue, pink, and red, as well as for the remaining basic colour terms from a large English-language corpus containing six billion words. We found and confirmed that pink was biased towards femininity and positivity, and blue was biased towards positivity. We found no strong gender bias for blue, and no strong gender or valence biases for red. For the remaining colour terms, we only found that green, white, and brown were positively biased. Our finding on pink shows that writers of widely available English texts use this colour term to convey femininity. This gendered communication reinforces the notion that results from research studies find their analogue in real word phenomena. Other findings were either consistent or inconsistent with results from research studies. We argue that widely available written texts have biases on their own, because they have been filtered according to context, time, and what is appropriate to be reported.

Gender, self-disclosure and emotional closeness in friendships: an egocentric social network study

Self-disclosure plays an important role in promoting emotional closeness in friendships. Some literature points to gender differences in emotional closeness and self-disclosure but findings are mixed particularly when comparing same-gender to cross-gender friendships. Our study aims to clarify previous findings by measuring broader friendship networks and taking into account each alter’s gender. Our sample of 215 participants (egos) listed on average 8 friends in their networks (in total 1774 friends listed). For each friend, participants indicated the alter’s gender, the amount of self-disclosure they made to the alter, and the emotional closeness they felt with the alter. We found no gender differences in network size or gender homophily, although men and women did have gender homophilous networks (men had more male friends and women had more female friends). Multilevel mediation models demonstrated that female alters elicited greater self-disclosure with both men and women egos. Self-disclosure mediated the relationship between the gender of the alter and emotional closeness for both men and women egos such that higher self-disclosure was associated with higher emotional closeness. We discuss our findings with reference to gendered communication norms and argue for the value of considering the gender of both alters and egos in friendships.

Effect of deliberation style on the gender gap in deliberative participation

The importance of citizen deliberation in democracy is widely recognized today and the current digitalized and more fragmented society may benefit from discussions among people with diverse opinions in a well-organized setting. At the same time, concerns have also been raised about inequality in deliberative participation. We narrowed our focus to gender equality and examined whether introducing an evidence-driven style of deliberation can mitigate gender inequality in policy deliberation. In our repeated measure (within-subjects) experiment, university students in Japan discussed divisive policy issues during two sessions. Half of the participants started the discussion by examining factual information about the topic (evidence-driven style) and the other half started the discussion by expressing opinions about the topic (verdict-driven style). In the second session, the two groups switched styles. We found a statistically significant gender gap in participatory contribution for the verdict-driven style, but no such gap existed for the evidence-driven style. Using causal mediation analysis, we also found that, compared with the verdict-driven style, the evidence-driven style of deliberation reduces the gender gap by lowering women's tendency to agree with men. One possible explanation from the viewpoint of gendered communication is that women were more confident in evidence-driven deliberations. This psychological effect is a factor that is harder for facilitators to control and thus the evidence-driven style can be effective even with the presence of facilitators. This paper demonstrates the importance of studying how deliberations are conducted and how deliberation styles can affect the content and the consequences of policy deliberations.

Culturally Competent Care for Transgender Voice and Communication Intervention

Purpose Despite constituting 4.5% of the population, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer+ community is poorly understood by the health care community. Seventy percent of transgender individuals report discrimination in health care, and 51% of speech-language pathologists do not know clinical techniques for transgender clients. This community is particularly obscured by its high degree of diversity, which can be confusing for clinicians who are unfamiliar with the nuances of the culture or unprepared to adapt to a gender-affirming therapy model. Method Methods focus on gender affirmation and community trust building. Specific targets included exploring self-expression through reflection, metatherapy, and observation of self and others in regard to various communication strategies. Clients were provided opportunities to practice and experience a gradient of degrees of gendered communication to make the experience affirming to their gender identity. Results Results were reflected in two case studies, Kasi, a transfeminine client, and RJ, a transmasculine client. Kasi began therapy as directionless, abrasive, and conflicted about their voice and transition goals. They concluded therapy focused, motivated to communicate more clearly, and achieving technical targets that were unexpected given starting points. Kasi made this progress in collaboration with the resilient focus of the clinical team on their validity and affirmation. RJ began therapy highly distrustful of therapy but unable to pursue hormone replacement therapy for pitch lowering. Their goal was to achieve voice modification through therapy. RJ finished their treatment consistently gendered as male on the phone and in public, with 130 Hz without testosterone. Conclusions Voice therapy is a vital health safety service for transgender clients, and increasing access to culturally competent care should be a concern for all speech pathologists. Building trust and empathy with this community will be a significant step in breaking down gatekeeping practices in the field and in the larger medical practice.