Gender Bias in Language Models

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Overview

This field studies how gender cues shape language models’ representations, predictions, and generated text, with consequences for settings such as hiring, healthcare, translation, and user interaction. Researchers use counterfactual prompts, curated benchmarks such as BBQ and StereoSet, real-world tasks, and analyses of model representations to detect bias across languages, cultures, and modalities. Mitigation approaches include counterfactual data augmentation, fine-tuning and adversarial learning, representation editing, and inference-time steering. A central tension is that fairer outputs do not necessarily remove encoded associations, and interventions can affect factual knowledge, task performance, or fairness across contexts and groups.

Latest papers

CardsList

66 papers11 papers in the last four weeks, up 175% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. Gender Associations in LLM-Mediated ADHD Self-Diagnosis

    Oct 24, 2026Matilde Elene Hansen, Ross Deans Kristensen-McLachlanGender Bias in Language ModelsLanguage Model Bias Evaluation

    Aarhus University

  2. Guilt by Association: Semantic Leakage Drives Associative Gender Bias

    Oct 20, 2026Hazel Chen, Peter West, Hila GonenGender Bias in Language ModelsLanguage Model Bias Evaluation

    University of British Columbia · Canada CIFAR AI Chair, Amii

  3. Who Gets Unmasked? Sampler-Induced Bias in Diffusion Language Models

    Oct 17, 2026Xujun Che, Farsheed Haque, Depeng Xu +2Diffusion Language ModelsLanguage Model Bias Evaluation

    University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, USA

  4. Analyzing Occupational Gender Bias across the LLM Training Lifecycle

    Oct 16, 2026Manthan Gadhia, Alexander Hoyle, Karolina StańczakGender Bias in Language ModelsLanguage Model Post-Training

    Department of Humanities, Social, and Political Sciences, ETH Zürich · TU Wien, Complexity Science Hub · ETH AI Center, ETH Zürich

  5. Trajectory-Guided Steering: Mitigating Spurious Feature Bias in Clinical Classification

    Oct 15, 2026Fardin Ahsan Sakib, Ziwei Zhu, Ozlem UzunerDebiased MLLanguage Model Steering

    Department of Computer Science, George Mason University · Department of Information Sciences and Technology, George Mason University

  6. Name-Bias in Large Language Models

    Oct 15, 2026Kalyan Bhetwal, Ceren Mert, Ian WhitehouseSocial Bias in Language ModelsDemographic Bias in Language Models

    University of Maryland, College Park, USA

  7. Bias Mitigation in Audio-Enabled LLMs through Adversarial Training and Distillation Methods

    Oct 15, 2026Adnan Al Ali, Jindřich Libovický, Anne LauscherAdversarial DebiasingLanguage Model Debiasing

    Charles University, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Czech Republic · Trustworthy AI Lab, University of Hamburg, Germany

  8. AI Representations of Mental Health Stigma: Quantifying the Gap Between AI Estimations and Human Perceptions Across Gender Groups Using GPT-Based LLMs

    Oct 12, 2026Soojong Kim, Hye Min Kim, Kwanho Kim +1Social Bias in Language ModelsGender Bias in Language Models

    Department of Communication, University of California Davis, United States · Department of Communication, University of Massachusetts Boston, United States · Department of Media, College of Politics and Economics, Kyung Hee University, South Korea

  9. A Systematic Investigation of Bias in Large Language Models for Advertising Relevance

    Oct 6, 2026Weiwei Wang, Yinchuan Xu, Jialu Gao +2Bias in LLM-as-a-JudgeLanguage Model Bias Evaluation

    Microsoft

  10. Acmite: Mitigating Gender Bias in LLMs through Concept-Guided Mutual Information

    Oct 1, 2026Tian Lan, Xiaoqing Cheng, Han Zhang +1Gender Bias in Language ModelsDebiased ML

    Kyoto University · Zhejiang University · Shanghai Jiao Tong University +1

  11. Gender bias across LLMs is common and highly heterogeneous

    Sep 29, 2026Edoardo Bolzoni, Valerio CapraroGender Bias in Language ModelsLLM Auditing

    University of Milan-Bicocca, Milan, Italy

  12. Harm Laundering in GPT Models: Evidence That Gender Discrimination Is Transformed Rather Than Reduced Across Safety-Trained Generations

    Sep 17, 2026Sarah Wyer, Sue Black, Noura Al MoubayedGender Bias in Language ModelsLanguage Model Safety Evaluation

    Durham University

  13. Linguistic Triggers of Gender and Racial Bias in Open-Weight LLMs Applied to Recruitment

    Sep 16, 2026Kosuke Kitahara, Nobuhiro YamaguchiGender Bias in Language ModelsAI-Assisted Decision Making

    Recruit Co., Ltd. 1-9-2 Marunouchi Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-6640 Japan

  14. How Humans and LLMs Read Gender into "Gender-Neutral" Physical Descriptions

    Sep 14, 2026Yingjia Wan, Lin Lin, Elisa KreissGender Bias in Language ModelsLanguage Model Bias Evaluation

    Department of Communication University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) · Department of Computer Science University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

  15. LLMs Mirror Country-Specific Gender Patterns If Asked, but Skew Male When Generating Media in Local Languages

    Sep 6, 2026Sharif Kazemi, Tanya Popli, Neil K. R. Sehgal +7Gender Bias in Language ModelsLanguage Model Bias Evaluation

    World Bank Group · Cornell University · University of Pennsylvania +2

  16. Effects of Answer Format Variation on Gender Bias in Large Language Models

    Aug 18, 2026Ksenia Merzlyakova, Sebastian Padó, Franziska WeeberLanguage Model Bias EvaluationLLM Evaluation

    Institute for Natural Language Processing, University of Stuttgart

  17. It's How You Ask: Gender-Associated Linguistic Bias in LLMs

    Aug 13, 2026Katherine Van Koevering, Anjalie FieldGender Bias in Language ModelsSocial Bias in Language Models

    Data Science and AI Institute Johns Hopkins University · Computer Science Department Johns Hopkins University

  18. How Do Large Language Models Judge Social Attraction? Evidence from Theory-Grounded Persona Ratings Across Multiple LLMs and Humans

    Aug 10, 2026Hasan Mahmud, Khawaja Abaid Ullah, Mohammad Javad Khojasteh +2Human Preference EvaluationGender Bias in Language Models

    School of Communication, Rochester Institute of Technology · Department of Electrical and Microelectronic Engineering, Kate Gleason College of Engineering, Rochester Institute of Technology Rochester, NY 14623, USA

  19. Unequal Verdicts: Investigating Gender Bias in LLM-Based Fake News Detection

    Aug 4, 2026Razieh Chalehchaleh, Reza Farahbakhsh, Noel CrespiGender Bias in Language ModelsFake News Detection

    SAMOVAR, Télécom SudParis, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, 91120 Palaiseau, France

  20. Symphony of Bias: Exploring Gender Associations with Musical Instruments in Multimodal LLMs

    Jul 29, 2026Farhan Farsi, Shayan Bali, Mohammad Heydari Rad +2Gender Bias in Language ModelsMultimodal Large Language Models

    Amirkabir University of Technology · King’s College London · University of Tehran +1

  21. LoRA for Gender-Inclusive Rewriting and Activation Steering for Counter-Narrative Generation

    Jul 25, 2026Akhil Rajeev P, Manoj Balaji JGender Bias in Language ModelsLanguage Model Steering

    C-DAC, Bangalore · Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur

  22. Evaluating and Mitigating Gender Bias in Pre-trained Embeddings for ML-based Recruitment

    Jul 22, 2026Farnaz Faramarzi Lighvan, Lynn HouthuysGender Bias in Language ModelsAlgorithmic Fairness

    AI Lab, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium

  23. Estimating Grammatical Gender Directions in Contextual Embeddings under Controlled and Natural Contexts

    Jun 29, 2026Huanping Xiao, Yingji LiGender Bias in Language ModelsRepresentation Disentanglement

    College of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Jilin University, Changchun, Jilin Province, China · College of Computer Science and Technology, Jilin University, Changchun, Jilin Province, China

  24. Can LLMs Hire Fairly? Racial Bias in Resume Screening

    Jun 27, 2026Zhenyu Gao, Wenxi Jiang, Yutong YanGender Bias in Language ModelsSocial Bias in Language Models

    Department of Finance, CUHK Business School, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

  25. Gender Bias in LLM Hiring Decisions: Evidence from a Japanese Context and Evaluation of Mitigation Strategies

    Jun 17, 2026Serena A. Hoffstedde, Machiko Hirota, Akshara Nadayanur Sathis Kanna +4Gender Bias in Language ModelsAI-Assisted Decision Making

    Shibaura Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan · Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Amsterdam, Netherlands · University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA +2

  26. Contaminated Collaboration: Measuring Gender Bias Transfer in LLM-Assisted Student Writing

    Jun 14, 2026Ariyan Hossain, Kazi Kamruzzaman Rabbi, Farig Sadeque +1Gender Bias in Language ModelsGenerative AI in Education

    Brac University, Dhaka, Bangladesh

  27. A Two-Stage Statistical Framework for Evaluating Associative Interference in Large Language Models

    Jun 12, 2026Achraf Cohen, Andrew KincaidGender Bias in Language ModelsLanguage Model Bias Evaluation

    Department of Mathematics and Statistics University of West Florida

  28. Harsher on Male? Evaluating LLMs on Gender-Asymmetric Moral Framing Across Diverse Conflict Scenarios

    Jun 12, 2026Guangzong Si, Dong Wang, Zhenhao Li +3Gender Bias in Language ModelsMoral Reasoning in Language Models

    University of Science and Technology of China · Eastern Institute of Technology, Ningbo

  29. Beyond Third-Person Audits: Situated Interaction Auditing for User-Centered LLM Bias Research

    Jun 10, 2026Andrés Abeliuk, Cinthia Sanchez Macias, Valentina Alarcón +2Gender Bias in Language ModelsSocial Bias in Language Models

    Department of Computer Science University of Chile Center for Artificial Intelligence (CENIA) Santiago, Chile · Center for Artificial Intelligence (CENIA) Santiago, Chile · Institute of Sociology Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile Santiago, Chile

  30. Neutrality Bites: Gender Representation in AI-Generated Animal Stories

    Jun 6, 2026Imani Finkley, Yuanxi Li, Melanie WalshGender Bias in Language ModelsSocial Bias in Language Models

    University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA