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Gender
biased language slows advancement of gender equality It was pointed out to me, and quite correctly so, that in the end of my last editorial I committed an obvious gender bias by referring to roles in our society with the male connotation and not in a non-gender specific form. I used the words “businessmen” and “congressman” as opposed to “congressperson.” My initial reaction is to be defensive when it comes to matters of political correctness because they usually wind up obscuring the issue at hand. Suddenly the discussion isn’t about the legitimacy of campaign finance reform or the constitutionality of banning same sex marriages or what have you. Instead it becomes about semantics and word choice. So real issues get clouded and in some cases set aside to deal with seemingly superficial matters of public relations. However, the more I considered it the less my word choice seemed like a simple semantic faux pas and more an example of a very subtle form of sexism still imbedded in the language. In many cases, particularly positions of societal power (like politicians, business professionals, etc.) the default connotation is male. The assertion here is not that the word “congressman” carries with it an implication that women are less qualified for positions in the U.S. House of Representatives than men. Rather, it might be better to think that at this point our collective consciousness and values as a nation have moved past that silly, misguided and ultimately faulty preconception. The difference here has become much more understated than that. It has to do with the direct perception, not with who is qualified but with who is expected to hold these positions. Referring to U.S. representatives as being by default male brings to bear an expectation of what the “norm” is supposed to be. This is harmful because when anything becomes the default connotation then whatever doesn’t fall under that default is perceived as abnormal. Under this perception equality becomes much harder to attain because one party is constantly coming from the immediately disadvantaged position of being the exception to what is accepted. I’m not trying to say that changing “policeman” to “police officer” is going to eliminate the hundreds of years of gender bias based on thousands of year of female repression. One of the problems with political correctness and the reasons that it’s received such a backlash is that it’s seen purely as superficial. But the gender roles that we apply to words, no matter how subtle, have long lasting effects on our preconception of what function members of different sexes should have in society. When one considers that we stereotype politicians and business executives as being older Caucasian males, then that stereotype can’t be entirely exempt as a contributing factor when in a population made up by 52 percent women. There are only 13 female representatives in the Senate and there have only been 31 since the Senate’s inception. This kind of bias doesn’t exclusively affect women. Men suffer from similar stereotypes that keep them from being kindergarten teachers or staying at home to take care of children for fear of being associated or stereotyped with some sort of pedophiliac tendency or lack of masculinity. The ultimate problem that this sort of profiling creates is not only that it limits women (or whoever the stereotyped group is), but it limits the profession itself. This is because it eliminates or dissuades people from undertaking a job for reasons having nothing to do with characteristics germane to the functions the specific job requires that person to perform. This only limits society because candidates or professionals that could have been outstanding in respective fields are disqualified by a society not yet comfortable with the idea that a woman can be president or that a kindergarten school teacher can be a gay man. It would seem that in order for a society to progress it should work to foster and accept the talent of all its members no matter where that talent should happen to lay. And that can start by removing the prejudice (no matter how subtle) from the language. Tim
Dragga is a junior political science major from Lubbock. |
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