Here are descriptions of Jane and James. Only the names and pronouns have been changed. Read Jane’s description before James’.
Jane is a lovely, smiley, bubbly girl of 22. But what people admire most about her is how feisty she gets when it comes to her career. Having completed a Masters in Politics, she is starting a new job. She is very driven and is already managing an intern, John. John sometimes complains to his friends about her bossiness, and Jane’s colleagues often describe her as being aggressive in her job. Sometimes, however, she displays emotional outbursts and over-sensitiveness about how she is treated in the workplace. Some even call her behaviour irrational.
James is a lovely, smiley, bubbly boy of 22. But what people admire most about him is how feisty he gets when it comes to his career. Having completed a Masters in Politics, he is starting a new job. He is very driven and is already managing an intern, John. John sometimes complains to his friends about his bossiness, and James’ colleagues often describe him as being aggressive in his job. Sometimes, however, he displays emotional outbursts and over-sensitiveness about how he is treated in the workplace. Some even call his behaviour irrational.
- How do you react to the first description? To the second?
- Do you think both are equally likely?
- How would you pinpoint the difference between the two?
The problem is not that there are different words to talk about people of different genders. We need to be conscious of how those words are used and what connotations they convey. Linguists have found time and time again (Hellinger and Bussmann 2001, Pauwels 2008, Hellinger 2011, Sczesny & al. 2016) that words specifically associated with women convey values that are not as well considered by society as those associated with men. They call this semantic derogation. This is the process of using negative connotations to belittle someone. This phenomenon often has to do – as is the case with double standards – with sexual behaviour.
Consider the word master and its supposed equivalent mistress. They are etymologically paired, yet one, mistress, has sexual connotations absent from the other. This is why mistress tends to be avoided outside of the context of marital affairs, and master is often used today in a gender-neutral way, to refer to a man or a woman. We can reach other arrangements, like saying headteacher instead of headmaster/headmistress
This semantic derogation is due to the fact that gender, as a system, does not only class us as either man or woman. It also confers to us certain attributes, and the social values behind such attributes. Historically, values associated with women have been regarded with less prestige, less authority, and sometimes with downright negative connotations.
There are other ways in which gender appears in language. Some languages have grammatical gender. Nouns and pronouns are divided between classes (masculine, feminine and/or neuter). For instance, moon is feminine in French (la lune) but masculine in German (der Mond). This was historically the case with English. Gender is still encoded in certain words, for example words expressing kinship (mother, father, daughter, son…). English has also kept traces of this history in suffixes (a unit added at the end of a word), for instance –ess and –ette.
Consider the pairs of words below. Which words can we apply equally to men and women? (adapted from Goddard and Patterson 2000:61).
Usher : Usherette
Actor : Actress
God : Goddess
Waiter : Waitress
Mayor : Mayoress
Now consider these two columns. Why is gender specified in the right column but not in the left? (adapted from Goddard and Patterson 2000:60-61).In the pairs above, the words on the left were historically masculine, but can now be understood to refer to any gender. But the words on the right can only ever apply to women (see masculine used as generic).
Nurse : Male nurse
Prostitute : Male prostitute
Doctor : Female doctor
Secretary : Male secretary
Scientist : Female scientist
Lawyer: Female lawyer
Here is a list of adjectives suggested by respondents. They might seem innocuous when considered separately. But when brought together, a picture starts to emerge, and the process of stereotyping involved becomes clearer. As shown here, gender can also be revealed as implicitly present if you consider words within their social context. Doctor, lawyer or scientist are often implicitly interpreted as masculine. This bias is reinforced by the fact that a lot of men are in such professions. Conversely, nouns such as nurse, secretary or prostitute lean towards the feminine.
- Woman
- bubbly
- smiley
- bossy
- irrational
- emotional
- sensitive
- raging
Look at these words. Ask yourself:
- Would I use it to describe a man? If so, would it mean the same thing? For example, bossy, bubbly, raging, irrational, emotional
- Do I ascribe certain traits to all members of a gender group? For example, sensitive
- Do I hold different assumptions and expectations according to gender? Do I tend to enforce them on people, for example by asking them to be more smiley? How might this affect my relationships with people around me?
- Are there gender-neutral equivalents for these terms? Would you use them?
Some gendered words are heard more about women of colour, such as feisty and sassy.
About words like bossy, a male respondent explains that they belong to:
‘the gendered language of assertion. […] It’s a way to describe (usually pejoratively) the behaviour of women, amongst men, and by men. And this is a kind of pernicious use of language, as a way of calling men into relation with each other, even when they’re uncomfortable with it, and a joint reestablishment of their control and status through the diminishment of that woman.’
