Language fairness for all: Inclusive writing reduces male-default bias in adolescents across reading levels

Abstract

Abstract The current study investigates whether inclusive writing (IW), specifically full doublets (FD), that explicitly mention both masculine and feminine forms (e.g., les étudiants[masc.] et les étudiantes[fem.] | male students and female students), can reduce male-default bias in adolescents’ mental representations, and whether reading fluency or gender moderates this effect. One hundred and nine French-speaking adolescents (mean age = 12.1 years), with a broad range of reading abilities, produced lists of YouTubers and influencers under either masculine or FD instruction. Results from mixed-effects models revealed that FD significantly increased the proportion of female figures named, compared to the masculine condition, independently of reading fluency. Girls generated more female exemplars than boys, but there was no interaction with instruction type. These findings suggest that FD effectively reshape referential processing in adolescence, even for less fluent readers, by facilitating the activation of feminine exemplars in working memory and guiding referential resolution. Practically, this demonstrates that brief linguistic interventions can influence social cognition across diverse literacy profiles. Our study bridges developmental, social, and psycholinguistic perspectives, offering scalable, low-cost strategies to promote gender equity. Future work should compare FD with other inclusive formats and examine online processing costs (e.g., via eye-tracking) in educational contexts.