Gender-specific job title
Encyclopedia
A gender-specific job title is a name of a job
that also specifies or implies the gender
of the person performing that job, such as stewardess. A gender-neutral job title does not specify or imply gender, such as firefighter or lawyer.
-man had the meaning "person" in Old English but in present-day English is clearly masculine and can be used to denote people by office and occupation. Examples of this are fireman, salesman, alderman and chairman. While some of these job titles have feminine variants (e.g., alderwoman), others do not because traditionally the positions in question were not occupied by women. Feminine terms such as actress, waitress, and usherette are marked with respect to the masculine, both formally (i.e., something is added to the masculine form) and in the sense that only the masculine form can be used generically to describe a mixed-gender group of people.
These guidelines are by no means a complete standard, as there is still much disagreement on proper usage. Many associations and governments publish handbooks of job titles featuring official recommendations for gender-neutral language.
argument, that gender-specific job titles at some level promote sexism
in the workplace. The side for the more traditional, gender-specific terms usually makes a practical argument, that replacing the historical terms everywhere they appear (in documents, etc.) would be difficult and expensive, or that it is unnecessary. However, there are many (in particular feminists
) who would claim that this argument is really a backlash against the argument for gender-neutral language.
There is much difficulty in resolving this debate, as in the case of gender-neutral language in general; however there is at least one difference. Whereas in the general case, there is often no appropriate singular gender-neutral replacement (e.g. the third person singular pronoun he) (although the use of singular they
is increasingly common), there are gender-neutral versions of nearly all job titles.
During the 19th century, attempts to overlay Latin
grammar
rules onto English required the use of feminine endings in nouns ending with -or. This produced words like doctress and professoress and even lawyeress, all of which have fallen out of use; though waitress, stewardess, and actress are in contemporary use.
Use of the term chairman remains widespread in predominantly male sectors of society, but chairperson or chair is now widespread in society in general, at least in the USA, Canada and increasingly in the U.K. For example, the boards of most Fortune 500
companies in the United States
are presided over by a "chairman" and also the overwhelming majority of the (FTSE 100) companies in the United Kingdom
have a "chairman", while committees in the United States House of Representatives
are presided over by a "chair", as of 2009. Since most of these are however men, a more correct description of the current language situation needs to consider use in organisations whose chairperson is a woman. Less than half of the members of the American Heritage Dictionary's usage panel accept the use of the word chairman in describing a woman.
Some usage guides, such as The Cambridge Guide to English Usage, advocate gender-neutral language in circumstances where all sexes are meant to be included. For instance, a business might advertise that it is looking for a new chair or chairperson rather than chairman. Gender-neutral language proscribes chairman, on the grounds that some readers would assume women and transgendered individuals are implicitly excluded from responding to an advertisement using this word.
Proponents of gender-neutral language advocate the use of a neuter form when/where appropriate. For example, a company may seek to fill a vacancy and hire a new chairperson. Since a gendered individual doesn't currently hold the position, its title reverts to a neuter form. Once that position is filled, advocates believe gender can be attached to the title as appropriate (chairman or chairwoman).
Sometimes this formulation can lead to hyper-correcting gender-specific usage, in which women become chairpersons but men remain chairmen. Some women opt to use the word chairman in preference to chairwoman, subject to the style Madam or Mister prefixing the title, which they perceive to be gender-neutral by itself. Particularly in academia
, the word Chair is often used to describe the person occupying the chair.
Proponents believe that job titles that add suffixes to make them feminine should be avoided. For example, "usher", not "usherette"; "comedian", not "comedienne". Some of these are almost entirely obsolete now, such as sculptress, poetess, and aviatrix. If gender is relevant, they believe that the words woman or female should be used instead of "lady" ("my grandmother was the first female doctor in the province"), except if the masculine is "lord" (as in "landlady"). However, when a female is in the office of "the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod
," it was changed to "the Usher of the Black Rod
" in Canada.
Terms such as "male nurse," "male model," or "female judge" are often used when the gender is irrelevant. Many advisors on non-sexist usage therefore deprecate them, saying that the statement of exception indicates that a worker of that gender is somehow an ersatz member of that profession. (Woody Allen
jokes that his sister was the first woman to be a male nurse in New York.)
associated with them, in many languages, there is an absolute requirement for morphological
changes to maintain sentence agreement. That is, there is a non-political content to the word changes, or inflection
. Nevertheless, gender-identification word endings are sometimes dropped, something that happened often in the former East Germany, for example.
Employment
Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. An employee may be defined as:- Employee :...
that also specifies or implies the gender
Gender role
Gender roles refer to the set of social and behavioral norms that are considered to be socially appropriate for individuals of a specific sex in the context of a specific culture, which differ widely between cultures and over time...
of the person performing that job, such as stewardess. A gender-neutral job title does not specify or imply gender, such as firefighter or lawyer.
Examples of gender-specific job titles
According to The handbook of English linguistics, the suffixSuffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
-man had the meaning "person" in Old English but in present-day English is clearly masculine and can be used to denote people by office and occupation. Examples of this are fireman, salesman, alderman and chairman. While some of these job titles have feminine variants (e.g., alderwoman), others do not because traditionally the positions in question were not occupied by women. Feminine terms such as actress, waitress, and usherette are marked with respect to the masculine, both formally (i.e., something is added to the masculine form) and in the sense that only the masculine form can be used generically to describe a mixed-gender group of people.
- In the case of waiter and waitress, the status quo seems to be to use those as gender-specific titles, with gender-neutral terms such as server (or sometimes waitron or waitstaff) rarely used in practice when dealing with an individual outside North America.
- Increasing numbers of women are calling themselves actors rather than actresses, especially in the live theatre. The Screen Actors GuildScreen Actors GuildThe Screen Actors Guild is an American labor union representing over 200,000 film and television principal performers and background performers worldwide...
annually gives out awards for "Best Male Actor" and "Best Female Actor". - The gender-neutral fisher has been used for fisherman; however, in Canada, Australia, Britain, Ireland and elsewhere many women who catch fish have inveighed harshly against this, demanding to be called fishermen, which they argued was the correct gender-neutral term to describe their career choice. Similarly, many female horseriders have expressed a preference to be described as horsemen.
- Military ranks which contain the suffix "man" almost universally remain unchanged when applied to female soldiers. For example, a female soldier serving in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical EngineersRoyal Electrical and Mechanical EngineersThe Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers is a corps of the British Army that has responsibility for the maintenance, servicing and inspection of almost every electrical and mechanical piece of equipment within the British Army from Challenger II main battle tanks and WAH64 Apache...
is known as Craftsman Atkins. - A midwife can be of either gender, the term coming from an Old EnglishOld English languageOld English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...
term meaning "with the woman."
These guidelines are by no means a complete standard, as there is still much disagreement on proper usage. Many associations and governments publish handbooks of job titles featuring official recommendations for gender-neutral language.
Debate
There is extensive debate as to whether gender-specific job titles are appropriate in a professional setting. This debate reflects the debate over gender-neutral language in general. The side for gender-neutral job titles usually makes an ideologicalIdeology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
argument, that gender-specific job titles at some level promote sexism
Sexism
Sexism, also known as gender discrimination or sex discrimination, is the application of the belief or attitude that there are characteristics implicit to one's gender that indirectly affect one's abilities in unrelated areas...
in the workplace. The side for the more traditional, gender-specific terms usually makes a practical argument, that replacing the historical terms everywhere they appear (in documents, etc.) would be difficult and expensive, or that it is unnecessary. However, there are many (in particular feminists
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
) who would claim that this argument is really a backlash against the argument for gender-neutral language.
There is much difficulty in resolving this debate, as in the case of gender-neutral language in general; however there is at least one difference. Whereas in the general case, there is often no appropriate singular gender-neutral replacement (e.g. the third person singular pronoun he) (although the use of singular they
Singular they
Singular they is the use of they to refer to an entity that is not plural, or not necessarily plural. Though singular they is widespread in everyday English and has a long history of usage, debate continues about its acceptability...
is increasingly common), there are gender-neutral versions of nearly all job titles.
During the 19th century, attempts to overlay Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
rules onto English required the use of feminine endings in nouns ending with -or. This produced words like doctress and professoress and even lawyeress, all of which have fallen out of use; though waitress, stewardess, and actress are in contemporary use.
Use of the term chairman remains widespread in predominantly male sectors of society, but chairperson or chair is now widespread in society in general, at least in the USA, Canada and increasingly in the U.K. For example, the boards of most Fortune 500
Fortune 500
The Fortune 500 is an annual list compiled and published by Fortune magazine that ranks the top 500 U.S. closely held and public corporations as ranked by their gross revenue after adjustments made by Fortune to exclude the impact of excise taxes companies collect. The list includes publicly and...
companies in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
are presided over by a "chairman" and also the overwhelming majority of the (FTSE 100) companies in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
have a "chairman", while committees in the United States House of Representatives
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
are presided over by a "chair", as of 2009. Since most of these are however men, a more correct description of the current language situation needs to consider use in organisations whose chairperson is a woman. Less than half of the members of the American Heritage Dictionary's usage panel accept the use of the word chairman in describing a woman.
Some usage guides, such as The Cambridge Guide to English Usage, advocate gender-neutral language in circumstances where all sexes are meant to be included. For instance, a business might advertise that it is looking for a new chair or chairperson rather than chairman. Gender-neutral language proscribes chairman, on the grounds that some readers would assume women and transgendered individuals are implicitly excluded from responding to an advertisement using this word.
Generally accepted writing conventions
Proponents of gender-neutral job titles believe they should be used, especially when referring to hypothetical persons. For example, firefighter instead of fireman; mail carrier, letter carrier, or post worker rather than mailman; flight attendant instead of steward or stewardess; bartender instead of barman or barmaid. In the rare case where no useful gender-neutral alternative is available, they believe both genders should be used.Proponents of gender-neutral language advocate the use of a neuter form when/where appropriate. For example, a company may seek to fill a vacancy and hire a new chairperson. Since a gendered individual doesn't currently hold the position, its title reverts to a neuter form. Once that position is filled, advocates believe gender can be attached to the title as appropriate (chairman or chairwoman).
Sometimes this formulation can lead to hyper-correcting gender-specific usage, in which women become chairpersons but men remain chairmen. Some women opt to use the word chairman in preference to chairwoman, subject to the style Madam or Mister prefixing the title, which they perceive to be gender-neutral by itself. Particularly in academia
Academia
Academia is the community of students and scholars engaged in higher education and research.-Etymology:The word comes from the akademeia in ancient Greece. Outside the city walls of Athens, the gymnasium was made famous by Plato as a center of learning...
, the word Chair is often used to describe the person occupying the chair.
Proponents believe that job titles that add suffixes to make them feminine should be avoided. For example, "usher", not "usherette"; "comedian", not "comedienne". Some of these are almost entirely obsolete now, such as sculptress, poetess, and aviatrix. If gender is relevant, they believe that the words woman or female should be used instead of "lady" ("my grandmother was the first female doctor in the province"), except if the masculine is "lord" (as in "landlady"). However, when a female is in the office of "the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod
Black Rod
The Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, generally shortened to just Black Rod, is an official in the parliaments of several Commonwealth countries. The position originates in the House of Lords of the Parliament of the United Kingdom...
," it was changed to "the Usher of the Black Rod
Black Rod
The Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, generally shortened to just Black Rod, is an official in the parliaments of several Commonwealth countries. The position originates in the House of Lords of the Parliament of the United Kingdom...
" in Canada.
Terms such as "male nurse," "male model," or "female judge" are often used when the gender is irrelevant. Many advisors on non-sexist usage therefore deprecate them, saying that the statement of exception indicates that a worker of that gender is somehow an ersatz member of that profession. (Woody Allen
Woody Allen
Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
jokes that his sister was the first woman to be a male nurse in New York.)
Languages other than English
When words have a grammatical genderGrammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
associated with them, in many languages, there is an absolute requirement for morphological
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
changes to maintain sentence agreement. That is, there is a non-political content to the word changes, or inflection
Inflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
. Nevertheless, gender-identification word endings are sometimes dropped, something that happened often in the former East Germany, for example.
See also
- EpiceneEpiceneEpicene is an adjective for loss of gender distinction, often specific loss of masculinity. It includes:* effeminacy — a man with characteristics that are traditionally feminine...
- Gender roleGender roleGender roles refer to the set of social and behavioral norms that are considered to be socially appropriate for individuals of a specific sex in the context of a specific culture, which differ widely between cultures and over time...
- Gender-specific pronounGender-specific pronounA language has 'gender-specific pronouns' when personal pronouns have different forms according to the gender of their referents.The English language has three gender-specific pronouns in the 3rd. person singular, whose declined forms are also gender-specific: he , she , and it...
- Gender-neutral languageGender-neutral languageGender-neutral language, gender-inclusive language, inclusive language, or gender neutrality is linguistic prescriptivism that aims to eliminate reference to gender in terms that describe people...
- Gender neutrality in English