#MindTheAdjective Newsletter (05.20.20)

Fun fact: the word "female" is a full-fledged adjective. Typically, its adjectival use is clinical and biological (e.g. "the female plant"). 

genEquality is led by a number of leaders who are women. Or should we say female leaders? It's definitely not lady leaders, right? (Tip: don't get our founder started on the term "girlboss." TL:DR, if ever necessary, "boss" works just fine.) At our organization, since we #MindTheAdjective and all, we generally prefer to use the term "leaders."

As more women rise to leadership roles and enter male-dominated industries, we often see their professional descriptions modified - literally. There seems to be a split between the use of 'woman' and 'female' as modifiers, with some people preferring one over the other. Our advice is that if you're stuck, consider that there's rarely a need to say something like 'female doctor'; most of the time, 'doctor' works just fine.

A body of evidence suggests that how people use gendered words, including personal pronouns (shoutout to #GreetNeutrally!), not only expresses their beliefs around gender, but also shapes the way they see the social world and their place in it. For example, when people hear word order choices - e.g. "his and her" or "husband and wife" - they read them as cues indicating the relevance of the people described by them.

So, if we want to disrupt the norms that have taken hold in our society, one good starting place is by disrupting our linguistic norms. So that way, we won't have to qualify or modify how we describe any woman - whether she's a doctor, plumber, athlete, farmer, caregiver, senator, prime minister, or hopefully someday, U.S. president.