Well-Intentioned "Gendered" Messaging Can Backfire for Girls and Women
A series of experiments with more than 1,100 children and adults in the United States (University of Edinburgh and NYU) found that messages celebrating female achievements by highlighting gender — for example, "A girl is the champion" — led participants to judge women as less capable in the activity, assume fewer women took part in it, and feel less interest in the activity itself. The effect disappeared when the same wording referenced fictional groups instead of real-world genders, suggesting that existing beliefs about men and women drive the backfire. The paper appears in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
Source: Phys.org — https://phys.org/news/2026-10-gendered-messaging-backfire.html
Women With Autoimmune Diseases More Likely to Have Symptoms Misattributed to Mental Health
A study of more than 6,600 people with autoimmune conditions (91% of them women), reported on October 12 in the journal eClinicalMedicine, found that 43% of women said their autoimmune symptoms had previously been misattributed to a psychiatric cause, compared with 33% of men. Women were 50% more likely to report a psychiatric misdiagnosis and faced longer diagnostic delays — one to two years versus under three months for men. The researchers say clinicians should consider autoimmune disease before settling on psychiatric explanations when symptoms persist, evolve, or involve multiple systems.
Source: Drugs.com (via HealthDay) — https://www.drugs.com/news/docs-more-likely-misdiagnose-autoimmune-diseases-women-mental-disorders-131618.html
Annual Dementia Cases Projected to More Than Double by 2050
An international study published October 12 in JAMA Neurology pooled individual data from 38,418 people across 22 population-based studies in 18 countries. It estimated 11.4 million new dementia cases worldwide in 2023, projected to reach 24.7 million per year by 2050 if incidence rates remain constant — a rise driven largely by population aging. After adjusting for age, new-case rates were higher among women than men (10.6 versus 8.6 per 1,000 person-years) and substantially higher in low- and middle-income countries than in high-income countries.
Source: Medical Xpress — https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-10-global-dementia-reveals-million-cases.html