Exploring Gender Bias in Large Language Models: An In-depth Dive into the German Language

Kristin Gnadt, David Thulke, Simone Kopeinik, Ralf Schlüter


Abstract
In recent years, various methods have been proposed to evaluate gender bias in large language models (LLMs). A key challenge lies in the transferability of bias measurement methods initially developed for the English language when applied to other languages. This work aims to contribute to this research strand by presenting five German datasets for gender bias evaluation in LLMs. The datasets are grounded in well-established concepts of gender bias and are accessible through multiple methodologies. Our findings, reported for eight multilingual LLM models, reveal unique challenges associated with gender bias in German, including the ambiguous interpretation of male occupational terms and the influence of seemingly neutral nouns on gender perception. This work contributes to the understanding of gender bias in LLMs across languages and underscores the necessity for tailored evaluation frameworks.
Anthology ID:
2025.gebnlp-1.37
Volume:
Proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Gender Bias in Natural Language Processing (GeBNLP)
Month:
August
Year:
2025
Address:
Vienna, Austria
Editors:
Agnieszka Faleńska, Christine Basta, Marta Costa-jussà, Karolina Stańczak, Debora Nozza
Venues:
GeBNLP | WS
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
427–450
Language:
URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/acl25-workshop-ingestion/2025.gebnlp-1.37/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Kristin Gnadt, David Thulke, Simone Kopeinik, and Ralf Schlüter. 2025. Exploring Gender Bias in Large Language Models: An In-depth Dive into the German Language. In Proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Gender Bias in Natural Language Processing (GeBNLP), pages 427–450, Vienna, Austria. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Exploring Gender Bias in Large Language Models: An In-depth Dive into the German Language (Gnadt et al., GeBNLP 2025)
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PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/acl25-workshop-ingestion/2025.gebnlp-1.37.pdf