When female journalists write about issues of gender equality, they often become the target of incivility and their work is devaluated. Research has investigated such devaluations based on journalists’ gender under the scope of byline biases, analysing if it matters to readers whether a news piece is authored by a male or female journalist. In this paper, we set out to study if gender byline biases occur when journalists write about gender equality. As gender attributions become particularly salient through the presentation of gendered emotion norms, we also inquire in how it matters for readers’ interest in reading such an article and the attributed credibility of the author when an article prescribes gender-specific emotions. We report findings from two consecutive experimental studies, manipulating gender bylines and emotion norm prescriptions and include reader gender as a quasi-experimental factor. Our findings show that gender byline biases against female authors are depending on content and context characteristics and only become activated when gender cues are clearly visible. At the same time, we found a tendency to judge female authors as more credible for topics on gender equality, which (partly) mitigated negative effects on reading intention for female authors. The prescription of emotion norms did not further strengthen biases against female authors. Our study opens the path for further investigations into the question when gender bylines are activated and underlines the challenges for female journalists’ visibility when they address controversial issues such as gender equality.

女记者撰写有关两性平等问题的文章时，常常成为不受欢迎的对象，他们的工作被贬低。研究已经在记者偏见的范围内根据记者的性别调查了这种贬值，分析了新闻稿件是由男性还是女性的记者创作对读者来说是否重要。在本文中，我们着手研究当记者撰写有关性别平等的文章时是否出现性别偏见偏见。随着性别属性通过呈现性别情感规范而变得尤为突出，我们还询问了阅读者对阅读此类文章的兴趣以及当文章规定了特定性别的情感时作者的可信度如何重要。我们报告了两项连续的实验研究的结果，操纵性别标记和情感规范处方，并将读者性别作为准实验因素。我们的发现表明，针对女性作者的性别偏见偏见取决于内容和上下文特征，并且只有在明显可见性别提示时才会激活。同时，我们发现有一种倾向认为女性作家在性别平等话题上更可信，这（部分）减轻了女性作家对阅读意图的负面影响。情绪规范的规定并没有进一步加强对女性作者的偏见。我们的研究为进一步激活性别旁白的问题开辟了道路，并突显了女性记者在解决诸如性别平等之类的有争议问题时所面临的挑战。