Pronoun or Antinoun?: The Unintended Consequences of Preferred Pronoun Disclosure
Dec 15, Wednesday, 11:30 am - 12:30 pm, on Zoom. The Zoom link is circulated separately via the BEE email list. Please fill the registration form to join our mailing list.
Presenter
Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University of Michigan - School of Information
Abstract
It is an increasing trend to disclose one’s pronouns online, either as part of one’s social media profile or email signature. One may include one’s pronouns to pre-emptively avoid being misgendered, to normalize pronoun disclosure, or to signal solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community. This fairly recent phenomenon of pronoun disclosure, however, may lead to unintended consequences, such as systematic exclusion from formal or informal networks and mentoring opportunities. To explore the disparate effects of pronoun disclosure, this project conducts an audit study where emails will be sent to professionals seeking to schedule an informational interview. By systematically varying the email sender’s name and disclosed pronouns, we will be able to uncover the effects of disclosing one’s pronouns and whether pronoun congruence to the sender’s name will result in differential email response rates. We will also explore variation in email response rates by field of study and gender of the email recipient. The results of this research will be one of the first to quantify discrimination based on pronoun disclosure and will highlight the nuanced effects of disclosure by context.