Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p> Gender inequality remains a global issue. However, less is known about how women respond to perceived gender inequality, particularly how they intend to express their gender. In Study 1 ( <italic>N</italic> = 198), female participants imagined living in a fictional country with either higher or lower gender inequality. Participants reported intentions to express their gender in more masculine ways under higher versus lower perceived gender inequality. Study 2 ( <italic>N</italic> = 293) extended this finding by testing whether women intended to express greater masculinity specifically or whether they more broadly aligned their gender expression with characteristics stereotypically associated with the advantaged gender group. We introduced a condition in which women held the advantaged position, alongside a male-advantaged inequality condition and a control condition with no explicit gender inequality. We found that women intended to express greater masculinity when men were advantaged, relative to the other conditions, and greater femininity when women were advantaged, relative to the other conditions. Our findings suggest that women intend to align their gender expression more closely with characteristics stereotypically associated with the socially advantaged group when they perceive gender inequality. This shift may reflect an attempt to symbolically move toward the socially advantaged group. </p>