Quick Ways to Skirt Gender Bias

As much as we might dislike it, change happens. Wrinkles appear, people come and go, and seasons we love or hate come to an end. Language changes over time too. As writers, we must remember that we write for the reader, not for the past. But sometimes new habits are hard to put in place.

In the American culture, we have been rethinking the gender bias inherent in our language since the early 1980s,[i] reflecting our increasing desire to promote in every way possible the equality of dignity and value inherent in all humans.

For those of us whose formative years immersed us in generic masculines, other ways to frame a thought often escape us as we write. And we think we have no other way to write without gender bias than the cumbersome he or she or the increasingly popular singular they.

But fear not! Many other syntax choices exist that avoid such violence to grammatical standards. Consider putting the following techniques in the top tier of your writer’s toolbox.
 

• Use plural antecedents: “Students who wish to raise their grades should study” rather than “A student who wants to raise his grade should study.”

• Use the relative pronoun who: Rather than “If a writer wants to be published, he must understand the target market,” rephrase to “A writer who wants to be published must understand the target market.”

• Rephrase to avoid needing the pronoun: “Each author must list a marketing strategy in his proposal for his book” can become “Each author must propose a book marketing strategy.”

• Use people or persons or humanity instead of man or men or mankind.

• Avoid the “–man” suffix in roles and occupations like chairman, salesman, or fireman by shortening (chair), using “person” if not cumbersome (salesperson), or adopting other equivalents (firefighter, postal worker, flight attendant).

• Other terms can equally substitute for words prefixed with “man–” like manpower (labor, workforce).

• Avoid differentiating between the sexes for professions: both women and men are actors, lawyers (not lady lawyer, please!), waiters, and hosts.

• Use equal terms for men and women: husband and wife not man and wife.

• Default to using Mr. for married and unmarried men and Ms. for married and unmarried women unless you are addressing a formal letter to a traditional couple. Only use Mrs. if a woman has specifically requested the term. If marital status is important, it should be important for both sexes.

 
The following two reference works, which you can find at your library, offer more suggestions for avoiding the singular “they”: “Sexim” in Bryan Garner’s Garner’s Modern English Usage and “Techniques for Achieving Gender Neutrality” (5.255) in Chicago Manual of Style.

You might also want to check out these online resources: a list of sexist words and their gender-neutral equivalents and a quick exercise to practice eliminating sexist language.

[i]See discussion of “Sexism” in Bryan A. Garner, Garner’s Modern English Usage, 4th ed. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2016), 821–24.