The Reverse Matilda Effect: How Does Focusing on Women in an Academic Field Affect Its Attractiveness?

It is often assumed that highlighting the contributions of female researchers to academic fields may make those fields more attractive to women, thereby encouraging female participation. The present study (n=802) aimed to test that assumption by investigating the impact of messages highlighting the contributions of women researchers to mathematics, psychology, philosophy, literary studies, and biology on the perception of those fields. We found that these messages did not encourage women to participate in the respective academic field. And more strongly they led both women and men to see that academic field as less interesting and worthy of study. We propose that the effect observed here, and previously not discussed in literature, is the reverse of the well-known Matilda effect, where the contributions of female researchers to academic fields are underappreciated to the point of erasure or misattribution to men. We also argue that these effects are the result of gender stereotyping that takes what are supposedly male characteristics as better suited for research work that what are supposedly female characteristics. Finally we suggest how to counteract this reverse Matilda Effect.<br>