Experiments with more than 1,100 children and adults found that highlighting a winner’s gender led people to assume fewer women took part, to rate women as less capable and to lose interest in the activity.
Headlines celebrating “the first woman” to win a prize, or announcements that “a girl is the champion,” are usually meant to inspire. By drawing attention to women’s achievements in fields where they have been underrepresented, the thinking goes, such messages can encourage girls and women to follow.
A new study suggests the effect can be the opposite. In a series of experiments published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, researchers found that emphasizing gender in descriptions of success led children and adults to underestimate how many women took part in an activity, and in some cases to see women as less capable at it.
Lead author April Bailey, a faculty member at the University of Edinburgh, said that while such messages are well intended, “it can backfire, as our research shows.”
Invented activities, real assumptions
The study, conducted with Andrei Cimpian, a professor of psychology at New York University, and Maya Kreitman, a doctoral student in clinical psychology at The Chicago School, involved more than 1,100 children and adults in the United States.
Participants read descriptions of invented activities, so that they would have no prior knowledge of who usually took part. In one version, the description highlighted gender, for example stating that a girl was the champion. In the other, it conveyed the same information using a personal name instead.
The difference in wording had measurable effects. When descriptions focused on gender, both female and male participants estimated that fewer women took part in the activity. Adults of both genders were also more likely to rate women as less capable at it. And participants who read the gender-focused descriptions reported less interest in the activity themselves.
Reading between the lines
Why would a celebration of a woman’s success lead people to think fewer women are involved? The researchers suggest that people read meaning into the decision to mention gender at all. If a description goes out of its way to say that the champion is a girl, readers may infer that a girl winning is unusual, and therefore that few girls take part or succeed.
The effects were stronger in adults than in children, which the authors attribute to adults’ greater tendency to draw that kind of inference. Adults have more experience with the conventions of communication, including the idea that people usually mention details because they are noteworthy.
Linguists describe this kind of reasoning as pragmatic inference. Listeners assume that speakers choose their words for a reason, so details that seem unnecessary carry implied meaning. Saying that a nurse is a “male nurse,” for example, signals that the speaker considers male nurses unusual, even if no one says so directly.
Cimpian, the study’s senior author, said that gender labels “don’t simply add positive information about women’s participation and abilities.” Instead, they can carry an implicit message that undermines the intended one.
Stereotypes do the work
To test whether beliefs about gender were responsible, the researchers ran versions of the experiment using invented social groups, such as “Daxes,” instead of women and men. When the messages highlighted membership in these made-up groups, the effects disappeared.
That result suggests the backfire depends on people’s existing beliefs about women and men. When people already hold the stereotype that women are less common or less able in certain fields, a message emphasizing a woman’s success may activate that stereotype rather than counter it.
The findings connect to a broader body of research on how language shapes beliefs about social groups. Earlier work by Cimpian and colleagues found that subtle wording, such as describing a field as requiring “brilliance,” can discourage women and girls from pursuing it, and that children pick up on such cues from an early age.
Celebrate, but differently
The researchers are careful not to argue against recognizing women’s achievements. “This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t celebrate women’s achievements—visibility still matters,” Cimpian said. “What’s counterproductive is highlighting women’s gender as the reason for celebration.”
Bailey suggested an alternative: “it may be more effective to simply show women succeeding in these fields without making gender the focus.”
In practice, that might mean featuring women scientists, athletes or engineers prominently in stories, images and examples, while describing them in terms of their work rather than their gender. Visibility, in this view, comes from seeing women in a field, not from being told that their presence is remarkable.
Limits and open questions
The experiments used invented activities and short written descriptions, which allowed the researchers to control what participants knew but may not fully reflect how people respond to real-world messages about familiar fields such as science, politics or sports. All participants were in the United States, and responses may differ in other cultures with different gender norms.
The study also measured immediate reactions rather than long-term effects. Whether repeated exposure to gender-focused messaging shapes career choices over years remains an open question, as does how the findings apply to messages about other underrepresented groups.
Still, the results offer a caution for educators, journalists, organizations and parents who want to encourage girls and women. Good intentions are not enough; the way a success story is framed can change the lesson people take from it.
Notes
- “‘A Girl Is the Champion!’: Well-Intentioned Gendered Messages Can Backfire.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 13 October 2026. DOI: 10.1037/xge0002002.
- New York University. “New study finds gendered messaging can backfire.” EurekAlert!, 14 October 2026. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1147636.
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