arXiv Computation and Language

Analyzing Occupational Gender Bias across the LLM Training Lifecycle

arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 11

Alignment Reduces Expressed but Not Encoded Gender Bias: A Unified Framework and Study

The paper introduces a unified framework that simultaneously measures intrinsic (encoded) and extrinsic (expressed) gender bias in large language models using identical neutral prompts. It finds a consistent link between latent gender information and output bias, but shows that alignment via supervised fine‑tuning reduces expressed bias while leaving internal gender associations largely intact and reactivatable by adversarial prompts. The study also demonstrates that debiasing gains on structured benchmarks may not transfer to realistic tasks such as story generation.

By Nour Bouchouchi, Thibault Laugel, Xavier Renard, Christophe Marsala, Marie-Jeanne Lesot, Marcin Detyniecki
arXiv AI
Sep 17

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

The paper reports the first systematic audit of open‑weight large language models (LLMs) in hiring contexts, examining how job‑posting language influences recruiter and job‑seeker simulations across six models. It finds that agentic language lowers recruiter scores for female candidates while communal language mitigates this effect, and that coded‑exclusion language sharply reduces recruiter scores for non‑White candidates and discourages non‑White personas from applying. The study also identifies the explicit demographic label as the main causal factor and proposes a concrete pre‑deployment audit protocol aligned with EU and U.S. regulatory requirements.

By Kosuke Kitahara, Nobuhiro Yamaguchi
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Jun 17

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

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in hiring workflows, yet most research on gender bias in LLM hiring decisions has focused on English-language, Western-format resumes. This study examines whether pro-female gender bias extends to a Japanese corporate context and evaluates two practical mitigation strategies.

arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 22

Fairness Beyond Anonymization? Demographic Leakage in German LLM-Generated Resumes

The study audits demographic leakage in German-language resumes generated by large language models. Using ChatGPT, Gemini, and Qwen 3 variants, the authors generate resumes from anonymized profiles, varying only gender- and ethnicity-associated names while keeping qualifications constant. Even after anonymization and gender-neutralization, classifiers can reliably distinguish male- from female-generated resumes, driven by subtle differences in gender-neutral terminology rather than overtly gendered wording; ethnicity-related leakage remains weak.

By Charlotte Leininger, Helena Veit, Matthias A{\ss}enmacher, Andreas Bender
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 1

Different Demographic Cues Yield Inconsistent Conclusions About LLM Personalization and Bias

The paper examines how large language models (LLMs) respond to different demographic cues—such as names—when users seek advice, focusing on race and gender in a U.S. context. It finds that using different cues for the same group leads to only partially overlapping changes in model responses, producing inconsistent conclusions about personalization and unstable bias metrics. The authors argue that LLMs react to linguistic signals tied to cues rather than to stable demographic categories, and they call for evaluations that use multiple cues and consider underlying mechanisms.

By Manuel Tonneau, Neil K. R. Sehgal, Niyati Malhotra, Sharif Kazemi, Victor Orozco-Olvera, Ana Mar\'ia Mu\~noz Boudet, Lakshmi Subramanian, Samuel P. Fraiberger, Sharath Chandra Guntuku, Valentin Hofmann
arXiv AI
Sep 11

Voice or Stereotype? Disentangling Acoustic and Content-Based Gender in Speech-to-Speech Models

The study investigates how speech‑to‑speech (S2S) models handle gender, distinguishing between the acoustic voice and the content’s gender cues. Experiments across five models in English, Spanish, and Mandarin show that while the rendered voice remains unbiased, the models consistently attribute speaker gender based on textual content rather than voice. When content and voice disagree, misgendering rates soar to 90%, whereas agreement yields only 2% misgendering.

By Xiaoqun Liu, Tanu Mitra, Harshit Rajgarhia, Abhishek Mukherji