Language both reflects cultural bias and creates it. As women in the workplace, how can we use language to promote gender equality?

1. Gender, Language
& Cultural Bias
The Archery Club

2. Agenda
• How language reflects our
cultural biases
• How language shapes our cultural
biases
• How we can use language to
promote gender equality

3. 01
Language reflects our
cultural biases

4. Language, as the medium through which we conduct
almost all relationships, public and private, bears the
precise imprint of our cultural attitudes. The history of
language, then, is like a fossil record of how those
attitudes have evolved, or how stubbornly they have
stayed the same.
David Shariatmadari
The Guardian

5. pejoration: when the
meaning of a word
gets worse over time
* this process is more likely to occur with words referring to women

6. Mistress
before: female equivalent of master
after: woman a married man is in a long term extramarital
relationship with, other than his wife

7. Hussy
before: female head of the household (13th c. contraction
of housewife)
after: a disreputable woman

8. Madam
before: equivalent of sir—used to address a woman of high rank
after: the head of a brothel

9. Governess
before: female equivalent of governor
after: a nanny or woman responsible for
teaching and caring for a child

10. Courtesan
before: someone who attends the court of a monarch
after: prostitute

11. Wench
before: female infant or young unmarried woman
after: a “wanton” or sexually promiscuous woman

12. given that we live in a world
in which our language is
infused with cultural bias, as
women, we are susceptible to
developing biases—even
against ourselves

13. So let’s share our test
results.

15. 02
Language shapes our
cultural biases

16. 85%
of abstract personifications in art can
be predicted by the grammatical
gender of the word in the artist’s
native language
BORODITSKY 2009

17. the social category of sex is
reflected in the grammatical
structures of (nearly) all
languages

18. and these structures have
been shown to influence how
gender equality plays out in
society

19. There are 3 common types of grammatical
structures pertaining to gender
• grammatical gender language: every noun is assigned a gender,
dependent forms must agree with noun, personal pronouns are gender
specific (French or German)
STAHLBERG 2007
• natural gender language: nouns do not have gender markers, personal
pronouns are gender specific (English)
• genderless language: no gender in noun system, no gender specific
pronouns (Turkish)

21. PREWITT-FREILINO 2011
111 countries were studied
gender equality
in countries where gendered
languages are spoken
in countries where natural
gender languages are spoken
gender equality
lessmore

23. 03
How we can use language
to promote gender
equality

24. How can we use this knowledge to
influence how we see ourselves,
and how others perceive us (and
treat us)?

25. what do you think?

26. Be careful about
using “gendered”
terms
• A recent study found
that using certain
types of words creates
gender bias in job
listings
*terms in job listings that
researchers have found may turn
women off
“Using previously published
lists of gendered words, the
researchers analyzed the
listings and found that while
male dominated fields
tended to use more
masculine words in job
listings, female dominated
fields didn't use more
feminine words.”
Klint Finley
WIRED
PECK 2015

27. Focus on using
inclusive terms
• When writing job
listings, more
inclusive terms tend
to attract more
women
*terms researchers have found to be
more inclusive
PECK 2015

28. Avoid sexist phrases
(and correct yourself
when you use them)
• Lookout for obvious
male/female words or
phrases that reinforce
stereotypes. Correct
yourself when you use
these terms.
Male Words Female Words
• two-man rule
• gentlemen’s agreement
• old boys club
• man up
• ballsy
• right-hand man
• manpower
• wingman
• middleman
• guys
• run like a girl
• diva
• prima donna
• drama queen
• debbie downer
• negative nancy
• everyone and their mom

29. Be thoughtful about
what pronouns you
use, and when you
use them.
• When speaking
hypothetically, we often
use gender specific
pronouns to describe
certain kinds of people
(ie. insurance agents,
bosses, bankers etc).
Female pronouns are becoming more
common, but male pronouns are still twice
as common

30. Use gender-
neutral pronouns
(and
• In 2015, “they” - used
as a gender neutral
pronoun-was voted
“word of the year” by
the American Dialect
Society
• The word is now
recognized as a
grammatically correct
singular pronoun

31. Further Reading
• Representations of the Sexes in Language, Sahlberg 2007, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/
291783641_Representation_of_the_sexes_in_language
• New Study Exposes Gender Bias in Tech Job Listings, Finley 2013, https://www.wired.com/2013/03/hiring-women/
• Here Are the Words that May Keep Women From Applying to Jobs, Peck 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/02/
textio-unitive-bias-software_n_7493624.html
• The Gendering of Language: A Comparison of Gender Equality in Countries with Gendered, Natural Gender, and Genderless
Languages: Prewitt-Reilino 2011, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/
257663669_The_Gendering_of_Language_A_Comparison_of_Gender_Equality_in_Countries_with_Gendered_Natural_
Gender_and_Genderless_Languages
• Eight Words That Reveal the Sexism at the Heart of the English Language, Shariatmadari 2016, https://
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/27/eight-words-sexism-heart-english-language
• The Right Words for the Job: How Gendered Language Effects the Workplace, Liu 2017, https://medium.com/women-in-
product/genderwords-b0be0cc8251f
• The Language of Gender, https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/writing-help/the-language-of-gender
• The Rise of She: What A Shift in Gendered Pronouns Means, Doll 2012, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/
archive/2012/08/rise-she-what-shift-gendered-pronouns-means/324827/