page_title: Finkbeiner test
section_title: Checklist
hierarchical_section_title: Finkbeiner test / Checklist
caption_attribution_description: English: Christie Aschwanden at Spotlight Health Aspen Ideas Festival 2015
context_page_description: The Finkbeiner test, named for the science journalist Ann Finkbeiner, is a checklist to help science journalists avoid gender bias in articles about women in science. It asks writers to avoid describing women scientists in terms of stereotypically feminine traits, such as their family arrangements.
  It was inspired by the Bechdel test, a measure of women's representation in fiction. The Finkbeiner test has been linked to affirmative action, because writing can cause readers to view women in science as different from men in negative or unfair ways. The test helps avoid gender bias in science reporting similar to various Bechdel tests that focus on under-representation of marginalized groups in different career fields.
context_section_description: The Finkbeiner test is a checklist proposed by freelance journalist Christie Aschwanden to help journalists avoid gender bias in media articles about women in science. To pass the test, an article about a female scientist must not mention:
  That she is a woman
  Her husband's job
  Her childcare arrangements
  How she nurtures her underlings
  How she was taken aback by the competitiveness in her field
  How she is a role model for other women
  How she's the "first woman to..."
caption: Aschwanden at the Aspen Ideas Festival in 2015
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