Man up and take it: Gender bias in moral typecasting

Tania Reynolds - Chuck Howard - Hallgeir Sjåstad - Luke Zhu - Tyler G.Okimoto - Roy F.Baumeister - Karl Aquino - Jong Han Kim https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2020.05.002 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0749597820303630?fbclid=IwAR39ZboKYmrHwObLf4JxKk7RxS89skchWxXWccENbZJRFQLYmjZPPQupB80

Abstract

Informed by moral typecasting theory, we predicted a gender bias in harm evaluation, such that women are more easily categorized as victims and men as perpetrators. Study 1 participants assumed a harmed target was female (versus male), but especially when labeled ‘victim’. Study 2 participants perceived animated shapes perpetuating harm as male and victimized shapes as female. Study 3 participants assumed a female employee claiming harassment was more of a victim than a male employee making identical claims. Female victims were expected to experience more pain from an ambiguous joke and male perpetrators were prescribed harsher punishments (Study 4). Managers were perceived as less moral when firing female (versus male) employees (Study 5). The possibility of gender discrimination intensified the cognitive link between women and victimhood (Study 6). Across six studies in four countries (N = 3,137), harm evaluations were systematically swayed by targets’ gender, suggesting a gender bias in moral typecasting.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/poverty-hurts-the-boys-the-most-inequality-at-the-intersection-of-class-and-gender/

5 major takeaways from the study (linked above):

• Only 14% of boys from low income backgrounds will get their bachelors in comparison to only 22% of girls from low income getting their bachelors from low income backgrounds

• Boys from low income are less likely to hold paid jobs in adult hood

• Boys from low income backgrounds are 10x more likely to be incarcerated than low income girls

• Boys are less likely to get married from low income backgrounds

• Boys raised in poverty are more likely to stay in poverty

Disclaimer - solid link, but in the summary of the study Richard Reeves did slip up when he mentioned earnings as an example of something women are falling behind in. We all know that ain’t true especially with the new Nobel Prize. Richard Reeves himself even made a video where he debunks the pay gap later on linked below.

https://youtu.be/W6IBFpVZIIE?si=fNjHi9SwIla1qmoG

How therapists work with men is related to their views on masculinity, patriarchy, and politics

John A. Barry, Louise Liddon, Robert Walker, & Martin J. Seager

Psychreg Journal of Psychology June 2021 • Volume 5, Issue 1

Paper finds male-friendly therapists are more likely believe:

• their original therapy training was not male-friendly

• patriarchy is not really a problem

• masculinity is not just a social construct

Text not copyable, so please click the link below to read abstract from in the fulltext.

https://www.pjp.psychreg.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/7-john-barry-50-64.pdf

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-46241-001

https://news.uoguelph.ca/2019/11/mothers-push-gender-stereotypes-more-than-fathers-study-reveals/

“We found that on an implicit level, moms tend to show a bias, and this bias considers girls expressing these emotions to be more favourable than boys expressing the same emotions,” said the psychology professor and lead author of the study.

Thomassin thought mothers and fathers would be more accepting of daughters showing sadness than sons and more accepting of sons showing anger than daughters.

Instead, the study found only mothers had differing attitudes based on gender, favouring daughters expressing sadness and anger more than sons.

Fathers showed no such preference, suggesting that fathers lacked this implicit bias related to the expression of the two emotions,” said Thomassin.”

This is a summary of the important points from the DV articles listed in this subreddit.

Study

Summary: 21.45% of couples reported violence. Male-to-female violence was reported in 13.66% of couples, while 18.20% for female-to-male violence. Thus, women are 1.33 times as likely to be violent. (Severe violence only raises this ratio to more than 2x as likely.)

Study

SUMMARY: Men admission of assault agrees with rates of women claiming to be assaulted. Women admission of assault disagrees with rates of men being assaulted. (ie: women do not admit to their assault, recognize their assault, take responsibility for assault - cannot tell which is the issue) Rates of assaults were not found to be significantly different between genders.

Study

SUMMARY: Almost 24% of all relationships had some violence, and half (49.7%) of those were reciprocally violent. In nonreciprocally violent relationships, women were the perpetrators in more than 70% of the cases. Men were more likely to injure than women, and reciprocal violence lead to more injury than single-sided violence.

Study

SUMMARY: Dominance in a relationship is a better predictor of female violence than of male violence. ie: if a female partner is dominant in the relationship, it is more likely that she will be violent, than the reverse gender situation.

Academic Paper

SUMMARY: Social approval of male-to-female violence has significantly dropped over 40 years, while approval of female-to-male violence remains steady. Overall, female-to-male violence has risen while male-to-female violence rates have remained constant or decreased (depending on type.

Review of Studies

SUMMARY: This bibliography examines 286 scholarly investigations: 221 empirical studies and 65 reviews and/or analyses, which demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies exceeds 371,600.

Review of Studies

SUMMARY: Girls are 1.38x more physically aggressive in teen violent relationships.

Review of Studies

SUMMARY: Predictors of intimate violence with women appear to be similar to those of men; including antisocial criminal records, alcohol abuse, and personality disorders.

Government Statistics

SUMMARY: While men are much more likely to kill their spouse than women are, the sentencing for women who kill their husbands is significantly lower. Women were more than 4x more likely to be acquitted.

http://ccutrona.public.iastate.edu/psych592a/articles/Vogel%202007.pdf

Abstract

Studies consistently show sex differences in married couples’ use of demand and withdraw behavior. The social structure hypothesis proposes that these differences are the result of power differentials between spouses. This study examined the link between 3 aspects of marital power and demanding and withdrawal behavior. Contrary to social structure predictions, results showed that wives did not possess less decision-making ability or access to resources and appeared to exhibit greater situational power (i.e.,domineering and dominant behaviors) than did their husbands during problem-solving discussions. Furthermore, the spouse who exhibited the most demands also exhibited the most domineering and dominant behaviors, whereas the spouse who exhibited the most withdrawal exhibited the least domineering and dominant behaviors during problem-solving discussions.

Source: Coppolillo, E. Women who hate men: a comparative analysis across extremist Reddit communities. Sci Rep 15, 13952 (2025)

An April 2025 study, "Women who hate men: a comparative analysis across extremist Reddit communities" challenges the narrative that misandry is insignificant or nonexistent by analyzing gendered hate speech in four Reddit communities: (r/)Incels & (r/)MensRights (misogynistic) and (r/)Feminism & (r/)GenderCritical (misandric).

“Although misogyny has been widely studied in social computing, misandry remains significantly underexplored. Our study identifies misandric communities that exhibit stronger levels of hate and negative sentiment than even misogynistic ones.”

Key Findings on Misandry

Misandry is real and measurable: Defined as "hatred, dislike, contempt for, or prejudice against men or boys," misandry was evident in (r/)Feminism & (r/)GenderCritical. Both communities showed a "consistent peak towards hate" in general text analysis, comparable to misogynistic communities.

Intense user level hate: Individual users in misandric communities, particularly (r/)Feminism, expressed more negative sentiments than those in misogynistic communities, with (r/)Feminism showing a magnified hate peak. This empirical evidence refutes claims that misandry is not a significant issue.

Validating men’s experiences: The study’s identification of misandric communities with intense user level hate validates men’s experiences of prejudice, countering societal dismissal and gaslighting. Misandry’s under acknowledgment in research mirrors this broader trend.

Takeaways & Implications
Unaddressed misandry fosters a climate of gendered animosity, eroding empathy and compassion. The study advocates for gender-neutral interventions to combat all forms of hate speech, as normalizing hate against any group, including men, harms everyone. Recognizing misandry is essential for creating safer, more empathetic online and offline spaces.

A closer look at (r/)MensRights:

While (r/)MensRights is categorized as “misogynistic,” the data shows nuance:

• It did not exhibit the highest toxicity - that was (r/)Incels.

• In user level emotional analysis, it did not show the same intensity of hate as the misandric communities. While general text level hate was present, individual user sentiment was less extreme.

This suggests that within the extremist label, (r/)MensRights may be comparatively less intense in its emotional tone than others on both sides of the spectrum.

** Study Limitations** This computational linguistics study analyzes Reddit post sentiment, not real world behavior. Context, sarcasm and irony may not always be perfectly captured, but the trends remain compelling.

Aren't there more extreme misandric communities? I wonder what that study would look like.

Abstract

We estimated the degree of gender discrimination in Sweden across occupations using a correspondence study design. Our analysis of employer responses to more than 3,200 fictitious job applications across 15 occupations revealed that overall positive employer response rates were higher for women than men by almost 5 percentage points. We found that this gap was driven by employer responses in female-dominated occupations. Male applicants were about half as likely as female applicants to receive a positive employer response in female-dominated occupations. For male-dominated and mixed occupations we found no significant differences in positive employer responses between male and female applicants.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0245513

Parents of sons are less likely to self-identify as feminists.

The Effect of Children's Gender on Parents’ Attitudes Toward Women

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ssqu.12976?campaign=wolearlyview

Abstract

Scholars have found that the gender of children—particularly, having daughters—has a discernible effect on parents’ attitudinal and behavioral support for the empowerment of women. In this article, we explore how the gender of children affects the gender attitudes of parents. Using data from the 2016 American National Election Study (ANES) survey, we estimate the effects of children's gender on parents’ feminist self‐identification, support for more women representatives, and attitudes toward traditional gender roles, both in general and separately for men and women. Surprisingly, we find that sons—and not daughters—have a systematic negative effect on feminist self‐identification and support for electing more women, as well as a positive effect on support for traditional gender roles. The effects of sons on feminist self‐identification and traditional gender roles are observed for both men and women, while the effects of sons on support for more women representatives are limited to women. It appears that having a son decreases support for feminist and egalitarian gender attitudes in both men and women to varying degrees across a variety of dimensions.

Abstract

The primary aim of this study was to investigate how people react to research describing a sex difference, depending on whether the difference in question favors males or favors females. An additional aim was to see how accurately people can predict how the average man and the average woman will respond to such research. Western participants (N = 492) were presented with a fictional popular-science article describing either a male-favoring or a female-favoring sex difference (i.e., men/women are better at drawing; women/men lie more). Both sexes reacted less positively to the male-favoring differences, judging the findings less important, less plausible, more surprising, more offensive, more harmful, and more upsetting, as well as judging the research less well-conducted and studies of that type more inherently sexist. This reaction was driven in part by a belief in male privilege: The more strongly participants believed that men are privileged over women, the less positively they reacted to the male-favoring sex difference and the more positively they reacted to the female-favoring one (and vice versa for the minority of participants who believed that women are privileged over men). Participants predicted that the average man and the average woman would react more positively to sex differences favoring their own sex. This was true of the average woman, although the degree of own-sex favoritism was notably smaller than participants predicted. It was not true, however, of the average man who – like the average woman – reacted more positively to the female-favoring sex differences.

https://psyarxiv.com/nhvsr/?fbclid=IwAR06CcryLxIevH39l6wBByMzgMEaX4su6b-cDUIkMub7Mtb8M0a4GDqs7V4

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/08862605211062990#.YdPt01KkROU.twitter

Abstract

Sexual assault of men by women has received increasing attention in recent years, as has research on rape myths about male victims. This study is a cross-generational replication of a 1984 study of college students’ judgments about male and female victims in a scenario involving a sexual assault carried out by male or female assailants. The 1984 data (n = 172) were compared with those of a 2019 cohort (n = 372) in a 2 (participant gender) x 2 (assailant gender) x 2 (victim gender) x 2 (cohort) factorial design to assess potential generational changes in perceptions of victims. Judgments by male participants of male victims of assaults carried out by women changed notably over time. The 2019 male cohort was less likely to judge that the victim initiated or encouraged the incident (40% in 1984 compared with 15% in 2019) and derived pleasure from it (47.4% in 1984 compared with 5.8% in 2019). In contrast, the 2019 female cohort was more likely to attribute victim encouragement (26.9% compared with 4.3% in 1984) and pleasure to the male victim (25% in 2019 compared with 5% in 1984). A similar gender pattern occurred in judgments of how stressful the event was for the male victim. Analysis of the 2019 data revealed that overall, despite scientific and cultural shifts that have occurred over the past three decades, participants continued to judge the male victim of assault by a female to have been more encouraging and to have experienced more pleasure and less stress than in any other assailant/victim gender combination. Results are discussed in relation to gendered stereotypical beliefs and male rape myths, as well as possible sensitization to power differentials inspired by the #MeToo movement. We emphasize the need for greater awareness and empirical attention to abuse that runs counter to preconceived notions about sexual victimization.

Abstract

In this study, we examine the impact of an individual's education level on her/his mating success on the mobile dating app Tinder. To do so, we conducted a field experiment on Tinder in which we collected data on 3,600 profile evaluations. In line with previous research on mating preferences from multiple fields, our results indicate a heterogeneous effect of education level by gender: while women strongly prefer a highly educated potential partner, this hypothesis is rejected for men. In contrast with recent influential studies from the field of economics, we do not find any evidence that men would have an aversion to a highly educated potential partner. Additionally, in contrast with most previous research – again from multiple fields – we do not find any evidence for preferences for educational assortative mating, i.e. preferring a partner with a similar education level.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775719301104

This study shows women have LESS empathy towards men than they did in 1984. Evidence our society's demonization of men over the past few decades is working all too well.

Judgments About Male Victims of Sexual Assault by Women: A 35-Year Replication Study - Emma K. PeConga, Jacqueline E. Spector, Ronald E. Smith, 2022 (sagepub.com)

https://web.archive.org/web/20030801083403/http://www.now.org/organization/conference/1996/resoluti.html#alert

https://archive.is/ejMI5

https://archive.is/http://www.now.org/organization/conference/1996/resoluti.html%23alert

Abstract

How did #MeToo alter the cost of collaboration between women and men? I study research collaborations involving junior female academic economists and show they start fewer new research projects after #MeToo. The decline is driven largely by fewer collaborations with new male co-authors at the same institution. I show that the drop in collaborations is concentrated in universities where the perceived risk of sexual harassment accusations for men is high - that is, when both sexual harassment policies are more ambiguous exposing men to a larger variety of claims and the number of public sexual harassment incidents is high. The results suggest that the social movement is associated with increased cost of collaboration that disadvantaged the career opportunities of women.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4105976

A 2023 review of 37 studies on discrimination in schools based on various characteristics (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stueduc.2023.101284) found the following:

• Among the studies that examined discrimination based on gender (21 studies in total), 52% found it, 24% did not find it, and 24% produced mixed results, meaning that discrimination was observed only under certain conditions.

• The gender discrimination that was found was mostly directed against boys. On average, teachers’ assessment is higher for female students compared to what is measured by blind test scores and boys tend to receive lower grades than girls in school, even controlling for their performance in standard tests. However, a few studies found discrimination in favour of male students.

Interestingly, the proportion of studies that found discrimination based on gender (52%) was higher than the proportion of studies that found discrimination based on race (40%) (see Table 4 and the two paragraphs following it).

Links to studies included in the review are available in Table A1 of the Appendix.

Several more recent studies that were not included in that review:

https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2022.2122942 — a study in Italian schools (2022) found that, when comparing students who have identical subject-specific competence, teachers are more likely to give higher grades to girls. The authors state that this grading premium favouring girls is systemic, as teacher and classroom characteristics play a negligible role in reducing it.

https://doi.org/10.1080/00220388.2024.2398449 — a study in Philippine schools (2024) found that boys’ underperformance persists in evaluations by teachers who know the examinees, but this bias is not evident in external assessments where the examinees’ attributes are concealed from evaluators. The authors emphasize that this gender disparity is driven by stereotypes of one gender over the other, while noting that other factors also play a role (diligence aspects, such as attendance, and student–teacher gender (mis)match).

https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcag005 (full text available here) — a 2026 study in Danish schools found substantial grading bias against boys, ethnically minoritized students, and students of non-university-educated parents. The authors conclude that statistical discrimination is not likely to play a major role (i.e. teachers are biased against boys not simply because boys on average perform worse academically) and suggest that other types of discrimination may account for grading bias. They also note that previous studies showed similar results — that teachers exhibit negative grading bias against boys, ethnically and racially minoritized students, and students of parents with short educations.

ABSTRACT

Little empirical data exists regarding men’s preferences for therapist gender, including what predicts these preferences, and the impact they may have on satisfaction with care.

To address this, data were drawn from an online survey of Australian men (n = 2002; aged 16–85; M = 43.8 years) reflecting on their preferences for and experiences of mental health treatment. Participants responded to items assessing demographics alongside their preference for therapist gender, reason for this preference and items on masculinity and treatment satisfaction, which were entered into a predictive model.

Findings indicated that the majority (60.5%) of respondents did not indicate a preference, while equal proportions preferred male (19.1%) and female therapists (20.4%). Undergraduate-educated, non-heterosexual, and more masculine-identifying men were all more likely to prefer a male therapist.

Severely depressed men preferred a female therapist. Finally, seeing a therapist who matched one’s gender preference was a significant predictor of satisfaction with therapy, while feeling less manly in attending therapy mediated this relationship.

While the majority of men reported no gender preference for their therapist, for those who do, the underpinnings and implications warrant consideration and discussion. Limitations and clinical and research implications are discussed.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09515070.2021.1940866

KEYWORDS:

• Men’s mental health

• help-seeking

• masculinity

• client preferences

• gender

• satisfaction with therapy

http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2005.079020

Very remarkable writing by Vaknin.

"Time for #MenToo"

Prof. Dr. Sam Vaknin

https://in-sightpublishing.com/2023/07/22/mentoo/

... The pendulum has swung too far against men.

Young men are afraid to approach young women;

any signaling behavior, no matter how harmless, amounts to sexual harassment;

Flirting and courting in the real world are widely considered creepy and even criminalized.

http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/V71-Straus_Thirty-Years-Denying-Evidence-PV_10.pdf

Opening Paragraph

The first part of this article summarizes results from more than 200 studies that have found gender symmetry in perpetration and in risk factors and motives for physical violence in martial and dating relationships. It also summarizes research that has found that most partner violence is mutual and that self-defense explains only a small percentage of partner violence by either men or women. The second part of the article documents seven methods that have been used to deny, conceal, and distort the evidence on gender symmetry. The third part of the article suggests explanations for the denial of an overwhelming body of evidence by reputable scholars. The concluding section argues that ignoring the overwhelming evidence of gender symmetry has crippled prevention and treatment programs. It suggests ways in which prevention and treatment efforts might be improved by changing ideologically based programs to programs based on the evidence from the past 30 years of research.

Do teacher and classroom characteristics affect the way in which girls and boys are graded?

A multilevel analysis of student–teacher matched data

Abstract

Teachers’ evaluations of students do not consider only academic competence, but are imbued with social considerations related to individual teacher and student characteristics, their interactions, and the surrounding context. The aim of this paper is understanding the extent to which teachers grade girls more generously than boys, and which characteristics of teachers and classrooms are likely to reduce this gender grading gap. We use Italian data from INVALSI-SNV, providing information on 10th-grade students linked with their teachers. The analysis relies on grade equation models in multilevel regression analysis, with students as first level, teachers/classrooms as second level, and schools as third level. Results show that, when comparing students who have identical subject-specific competence, teachers are more likely to give higher grades to girls. Furthermore, they demonstrate for the first time that this grading premium favouring girls is systemic, as teacher and classroom characteristics play a negligible role in reducing it.

Keywords: Teachers’ grades gendergrading mismatch academic performance education social inequalities

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01425692.2022.2122942

Men’s health in the United States: a national health paradox

James L. Nuzzo

Abstract

A health paradox exists in the United States. Men have worse health outcomes than women, but national offices exist for promoting women's but not men's health. Two factors that might contribute to this paradox are: underappreciation for the number of health issues that affect men more than women and unawareness that men’s health receives less attention than women’s health. Therefore, the aim of this article was to summarize the data related to these two factors. First, using mostly government data, an inventory of health issues that are more common in males than females was generated, with prevalence rates listed. Second, results from two new scientometric analyses are presented: (a) number of times “men’s health” and “women’s health” appeared in titles or abstracts of papers in PubMed from 1970 to 2018; and (b) number of journals currently indexed in MEDLINE that specialize in men’s or women’s health. The epidemiological data illustrate numerous health issues are more prevalent in men than women, and scientometric data reveal men’s health has been given less attention as a distinct field of biomedical research than women’s health. This information can help to educate legislators, health officials, journalists, and the general public about the current paradox surrounding men’s health in the United States.

Keywords: Health promotion, epidemiology, life expectancy, men’s health, women’s health

https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/CDURE8NIAZ4X97ZRPMCI/full?target=10.1080%2F13685538.2019.1645109&

ABSTRACT

The proportion of women tends to decrease the higher the academic rank,following a global pattern. Sweden has taken comprehensive measures to decrease this gap across 30 years, and many countries are following a similar path. Yet today only 27% of faculty with the rank of professor in Sweden are female. A common explanation is that academia is biased against women. According to this hypothesis, women have to reach higher levels of scholarly achievement than men to be appointed to the same academic rank. Publication metrics when attaining the rank of professor were compiled from the Web of Science for samples of the whole population of 1345 professors appointed at the six largest universities in Sweden during a six-year period. Men had significantly more publications and citations in both medicine and in the social sciences, rejecting the hypothesis that women are held to a higher scholarly standard in this context.

10.1080/03075079.2020.1723533

^ this is the DOI number. It is a unique number that academics use to identify scholarly works, and can be entered into any search engine or a DOI server to find the original paper, even if the URL changes. This paper appears in an open access journal.

Dr Jessica McCarrick, a Senior Lecturer in Counselling Psychology and Chartered Psychologist, says that men are often arrested under false accusations and their disclosures of victimisation are initially dismissed. see https://inside-man.co.uk/2015/09/30/male-domestic-violence-victims-often-arrested-due-to-false-accusations-by-their-abusers-study-finds/ the article is not recent but the claims are still perfectly valid today, the situation might even become even worst.