to say, but that it also reflects social realities and makes us see the world in a
particular way (for instance that lawyers are men). By exercising an influence on
our thinking, however subtle, language use thus reinforces stereotypes that
define gender identities. In the same vein, boys and girls learn to follow social
norms when they speak. While the instruction ‘speak like a lady!’ sounds a bit
antiquated, communication norms for boys (who ‘will be boys’) and girls are
different and again reinforce stereotypes. Men have more licence to be assertive
and rude than women, who are expected to be more polite and modest.
Because gender identities are ensembles of selected personality traits and
stereotypes, feminist critics see stylistic guidance that eliminates gender bias as
one approach to achieving more social equality.
In English, grammatical gender plays an unimportant role and is, therefore,
relatively easy to manipulate. When the gender-neutral debate migrated to other
languages, it became clear that the relationship between natural gender and
grammatical gender is highly variable. In French, Italian, and Polish, for
example, stylistic gender neutrality is more difficult to effect than in English. On
the other hand, Hungarian and Chinese along with dozens of other languages
have no grammatical gender at all. Many languages have more than two genders,
German and Tamil, for example, and many, such as Czech and Danish, have
more than three. Swahili has a system of twenty noun classes that fulfil similar
functions. What is more, the gender of things and the gender of words denoting
them varies across languages. The sun is masculine in Italian, il sole, but
feminine in German, die Sonne. What of that? Shall we lobby for a gender-
neutral sun in both languages?
This is perhaps moot, but observations about grammatical gender in different
languages must caution us not to jump to conclusions about the relationship
between grammatical and social categories.
In the English-speaking world, these considerations had little effect on the
gender-neutral language debate, which continues to date, because some feminists
are convinced that the perpetuation of linguistic norms and conventions
associated with boys and girls reinforce male dominance and make girls develop
a stigmatized identity. Other feminists argue that, instead of the cause of gender
discrimination, language reform addresses the symptom only and will at best
accomplish some window dressing.