Tag: gender

How Gender Bends Meaning

English does not have grammatical gender—nouns are not classified as “masculine” or “feminine” as they are in other European languages. But we do have words that denote gender, like man or girl. There is...

Addressing the Gender Bias in French

French speakers have long been engaged in a debate over the language’s gender inclusivity—or rather its lack thereof. While some progress has been made toward feminizing the language (such as the 2012 move to...
Young woman in coat sitting looking at view of United States Congress Capitol building, golden orange yellow foliage autumn fall trees on street during sunny day in Washington DC

Congress Rules Set to Become Gender Inclusive

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Rules Committee chair James P. McGovern (D-MA) have unveiled the rules for the 117th Congress, including changes to the Standing Rules (Section 2, subsection e), which “modernize the use...

‘Vague’ Language of Male Researchers Wins More Grants

A new study in Nature has found that grant reviewers favor vague and broad terminology used more often by men, despite the fact that proposals using those terms don’t produce better research. The study...

Germans Resist Gender Modifications

On March 6, more than seventy high-profile Germans, including linguists, teachers, journalists, lawyers, and writers, published a letter and an accompanying petition that condemned new linguistic practices which attempt to address implicit gender connotations in language. The letter decried...

French Genders Get Political

The French prime minister, Édouard Philippe, has banned “inclusive writing” in official texts, clamping down on attempts to make the French language more female-friendly. Moves to end the linguistic dominance of the masculine over the...
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