Recap

In the first post of this series, I had a closer look at what gender-inclusive language is and discussed a few of the arguments for and against using it. If you have not yet had a look at it and would like to find out more about the basics, you can read the article here.

I will now finally have a look at how you can achieve gender-inclusive writing, including some hands-on advice for all of you who would like to write more inclusively.

Writing guidelines

Awareness

Before we can actually start working on our gender-inclusive writing, we first need to hone our sensibility for gendered language. Only once we are able to recognise it in our own texts can we change the way we write.

One great way of doing this is attentive reading. When you next open a blog post, a news article or a document at work, try and pay close attention to gendering in the text. Has the author used neutral terms or is there a lot of gendered language in the text where it would have been unnecessary? What did they do well? What could have been improved?

With these lessons learned, take a look at your own texts and ask yourself the same questions. Do you use only gendered language where it is necessary? What are you doing well? What could be improved?

Sometimes, however, it is hard to spot gendered language because certain terms are incredibly engrained in our everyday use. That is why I have created a short list of common examples below, with which to focus your attention.

Gendered and gender-inclusive terms

Practical examples

The following sections contain examples from areas where gendering typically happens and how it can be avoided.

Personal pronouns

One of the most common sources of gendered language are personal pronouns. Many people unthinkingly use “he,” even if the actual gender of the person is unknown.

One way of circumventing this would be using “they” as a singular. This has been a bit of a hot topic recently, but it is not actually a modern invention. “They” as a singular personal pronoun has been around for over a century. Example: instead of “The visitor spent all his money on a single item.” say “The visitor spent their money on a single item.”

Another way of avoiding accidental gendering in pronouns is using a plural for general statements. Example: instead of “A German pupil spends less time at school than his British peer.” you could say “German pupils spend less time at school than their British peers.”

Professions

Luckily, English happens to be a lot less gendered than many other languages. Many words can already be used neutrally to refer to both men and women, e. g. “teacher” or “engineer”. There are, however, still many gendered professions in English. Here are a few examples and ways of phrasing them in a gender-inclusive way:

Chairman / chairwomen – chairperson
Policeman / policewoman – police officer
steward / stewardess – flight attendant

Gender-biased expressions

Sometimes, unconscious bias works its way into our texts. Make sure to avoid statements such as “women are always emotional” or “boys don’t cry”, which convey gendered stereotypes.

Other common phrases

Another common source of gendering are expressions that include “man” as a substitute for all humans. Two expressions commonly found in the space environment would be “mankind” and “manned”. Here it would be better to use “humanity” / “humankind” and “crewed”, respectively.

General advice

Here are some general areas you can look out for when checking your writing for gender bias:

• Check where you have used gendered language. Is it necessary?
• Don’t assume gender (identity), e. g. from a person’s name.
• Pro tip: many people nowadays indicate their pronouns on social media or in their email footers; this is a good research possibility and a good opportunity to get it right in your email replies, for example.
• Some guidelines suggest using the passive voice to avoid gendered language, but this should only be done occasionally as it tends to impact readability.

If you are interested in further reading and examples, check out the UN Guidelines on gender-inclusive language.

 

(Just a quick reminder at the end: there won’t be an English-language post in April, as I will be taking a look at gender-inclusive writing in German—an extensive topic! I am planning to be back with a new language-related post in May.)