A grammar of inequality. The relation between language and gender attitudes in the European context.

This thesis investigates how linguistic gender asymmetries relate to gender prejudice and inequalities across European contexts. Building on prior sociolinguistic research, it distinguishes between gender prevalence – the frequency with which languages require gender distinctions – and gender asymmetry – the unequal linguistic treatment of female and male referents. Using archival data from over 38,000 European participants, and a measure of linguistic gender asymmetry derived from Gygax et al. (2019), the study found that greater linguistic asymmetry was moderately associated with less egalitarian gender attitudes, even after controlling for relevant individual variables. Multiple regression comparisons with existing classifications of gender prevalence showed that the asymmetry score was a stronger predictor of sexism than mere gender prevalence. Notably, socio-economic context consistently emerged as a sizeable covariate across regression models. Furthermore, gender asymmetry was negatively related to women’s political representation and labour participation, partially through the mediation of speakers’ gender attitudes. These findings suggest that linguistic gender asymmetries, more than mere gender prevalence, go hand in hand with gender disparities. The thesis highlights the importance of distinguishing between gender prevalence and asymmetry to better understand the linguistic correlates of sexism and gender inequalities.