Skip to main content

PERSPECTIVE article

Front. Soc. Psychol.
Sec. Gender, Sexuality and Relationships
Volume 2 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/frsps.2024.1455364
This article is part of the Research Topic Gender and Power Relations View all articles

The Ubiquity of the Gender/Sex Binary: Power and Status in Social Psychology

Provisionally accepted
Kira Kay Means Kira Kay Means *Thekla  Morgenroth Thekla Morgenroth
  • Purdue University, West Lafayette, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    As feminist and academic discussions of gender diversity have become more common in recent years, social psychological research on transgender and nonbinary individuals has followed suit. However, it seems that power and status in social psychology, as reflected by our top journals and funding structures, are still concentrated around the gender/sex binary. Using PsycINFO, we analyzed the proportion of transgender- and nonbinary-related research published in top social psychology and general psychology journals in recent years, comparing these proportions to gender-related topics frequently studied in the context of the gender binary (e.g., gender equality/inequality, sexism, gender stereotypes, etc.) that seem to be more commonly represented in these journals. We used similar keyword searches to also examine current and expired NSF-funded projects and determine how frequently these projects reflected more inclusive and less binary models of gender. In general, top social and general psychological journals published proportionally much more research on other gender-related topics than on transgender and nonbinary populations. Among NSF-funded projects in the Social Psychology program or the broader Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences, zero abstracts included the terms “transgender,” “nonbinary,” or variations of these terms, in comparison to much larger numbers that mentioned gender or gender-related topics. We close by discussing the implications of this imbalance and likely benefits for the field if transgender- and nonbinary-related research were to hold a higher status in social psychology.

    Keywords: gender, gender binary, social psychology, transgender, nonbinary

    Received: 26 Jun 2024; Accepted: 11 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Means and Morgenroth. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Kira Kay Means, Purdue University, West Lafayette, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.