Why Highlighting Gender When Celebrating Women Can Backfire And Undermine Success

Highlighting Gender in Professional Success Can Unintentionally Undermine Competence

The findings, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, indicate that drawing attention to a person’s gender when celebrating an achievement can signal that their presence in that domain is exceptional or unexpected. According to the research team, this framing may inadvertently reinforce the idea that women are outliers in certain roles.

To investigate the impact of these labels, researchers conducted a series of experiments involving over 1,100 participants across the United States. Volunteers were asked to evaluate fictional activities—using terms like “Gazzer”—to ensure that personal biases regarding real-world professions did not skew the results. By comparing descriptions that explicitly mentioned gender (e.g., “A girl is the Gazzer champion”) with those using only a name (e.g., “Joan is the Gazzer champion”), the team isolated the impact of the messaging itself.

The results were consistent across the board. Participants who read gender-focused descriptions were more likely to conclude that fewer women participated in the activity and were less capable in that field. Furthermore, those exposed to the gendered framing expressed lower personal interest in the activities themselves.

The researchers observed that these negative inferences were more pronounced in adults than in children. This suggests that adults are more conditioned to “read between the lines” of social messaging, interpreting the highlighting of gender as an indicator that the subject is breaking a social norm. Interestingly, when the researchers swapped gender labels for neutral, fictional group identifiers, the backfire effect disappeared. This indicates that the problem stems specifically from how society perceives established gender roles, rather than the act of group labeling itself.

Andrei Cimpian, a psychology professor at New York University and the study’s senior author, notes that while visibility is essential for progress, the method of delivery matters significantly. “What’s counterproductive is highlighting women’s gender as the reason for celebration,” Cimpian says. “Our study shows that subtle communicative inferences can cause well-intentioned gendered messaging to undermine its own goals.”