Washington state's Legislature recently decreed that all statutes be rewritten to incorporate gender-neutral language. "Freshman" became "first-year student," and "penmanship" (note the middle syllable) became "handwriting." A Reuters report indicated that Washington had become the nation's fourth state "eliminating gender bias from its official lexicon," joining Florida, North Carolina and Illinois.
Huh?
Minnesota adopted a similar mandate for its legal manuscripts back in the mid-1980s. That maneuver did the state proud, said St. Catherine University sociology Prof. Nancy Heitzig,
"Language is power, right?" she said. "When we had gendered language, even if we're not constantly thinking about it, the message is that that's the norm and implies that it's a man's world and that's how it should be.
"Language apes culture. Language helps structure social and cultural categories. However trivial it may seem, [switching to gender-neutral language] does reveal a social and political position that gender inequality is unacceptable."
But others consider linguistic changes simply a first step.
"You can get people to change their language," said Amy Sheldon, professor of communication studies at the University of Minnesota. "But that doesn't mean they'll change the way they view men and women. It doesn't automatically change whether people are acting sexistly and non-sexistly."
The process of rewording Minnesota's statutes took two years. In 1984, the state's Office of Revisors was tasked to alter all "nonsubstantive gender-specific terms." Master indexer Maryann Corbett said that while her office couldn't manage to make all the statute manuals genderless, it came pretty close. "We decided to stay with 'Work that has to be done in a workmanlike manner,' " she said.
