Gender Inclusivity Fairness Index (GIFI): A Multilevel Framework for Evaluating Gender Diversity in Large Language Models

Zhengyang Shan, Emily Diana, Jiawei Zhou


Abstract
We present a comprehensive evaluation of gender fairness in large language models (LLMs), focusing on their ability to handle both binary and non-binary genders. While previous studies primarily focus on binary gender distinctions, we introduce the Gender Inclusivity Fairness Index (GIFI), a novel and comprehensive metric that quantifies the diverse gender inclusivity of LLMs. GIFI consists of a wide range of evaluations at different levels, from simply probing the model with respect to provided gender pronouns to testing various aspects of model generation and cognitive behaviors under different gender assumptions, revealing biases associated with varying gender identifiers.We conduct extensive evaluations with GIFI on 20 prominent open-source and proprietary LLMs of varying sizes and capabilities, discovering significant variations in LLMs’ gender inclusivity. Our study highlights the importance of improving LLMs’ inclusivity, providing a critical benchmark for future advancements in gender fairness in generative models.
Anthology ID:
2025.acl-long.128
Volume:
Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
Month:
July
Year:
2025
Address:
Vienna, Austria
Editors:
Wanxiang Che, Joyce Nabende, Ekaterina Shutova, Mohammad Taher Pilehvar
Venue:
ACL
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
2548–2579
Language:
URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingestion-acl-25/2025.acl-long.128/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Zhengyang Shan, Emily Diana, and Jiawei Zhou. 2025. Gender Inclusivity Fairness Index (GIFI): A Multilevel Framework for Evaluating Gender Diversity in Large Language Models. In Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers), pages 2548–2579, Vienna, Austria. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Gender Inclusivity Fairness Index (GIFI): A Multilevel Framework for Evaluating Gender Diversity in Large Language Models (Shan et al., ACL 2025)
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PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingestion-acl-25/2025.acl-long.128.pdf