Email Responsiveness Varies Based on the Pronouns in the Requesters' Email Signature: The Role of They/Them Pronouns

The current work is the first audit study to experimentally investigate bias toward people who use they/them pronouns in real-life circumstances, extending prior survey and experimental scenario work. Four hundred and sixty-six authors (62.30% perceived as female identifying and 37.70% perceived as male identifying as coded by independent raters) of recently published empirical psychology articles were contacted with a request for a copy of their recent work. The content of the emails was identical except the email signature was randomly assigned to include she/her, he/him, they/them, or no pronouns. The primary dependent variable was whether or not emails were responded to. As hypothesized, emails from requesters with they/them pronouns were less likely to be responded to overall than all other conditions. However, also consistent with hypotheses, this effect was moderated by the perceived gender of the author. Authors who were perceived as female responded at similar rates regardless of the pronouns in the requester's email. Authors who were perceived as male were less likely to respond to emails from requesters with they/them pronouns than all other conditions. This work finds that people who use they/them pronouns experience bias in real-world situations due solely to their gender pronouns. This clear demonstration of gender bias even in a low-stakes educational setting highlights the need to further investigate and dismantle prejudice regarding gender diversity in academia.