Calling teachers Sir and Miss 'depressing and sexist' 14 May 2014Last updated at 01:20 ET Calling teachers "Sir" or "Miss" is depressing, sexist and gives women in schools a lower status than their male counterparts, an academic has said. Prof Jennifer Coates told the Times Educational Supplement "Sir is a knight... but Miss is ridiculous - it doesn't match Sir at all".
She said she had been struck by the disparity while volunteering in a secondary school. But one educationalist said being called "Miss" was a sign of respect. Prof Coates, emeritus professor of English language and linguistics at the University of Roehampton, said she had been surprised by the different titles given to male and female teachers. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote If I'm in a school where students don't know me and they call me Miss, I'm fine with that. End QuoteDebbie CoslettBrook Learning Trust "I didn't think there was this awful disparity between professorial status and these young teachers, but they're all Sir and I'm not. 'Showing respect'
On Twitter, language use varies by gender. Now THIS Is A Commercial EVERY Woman Should See. I’m Blown Away! Penmanship is now 'handwriting' as Washington state removes gender bias in statutes. Susan Sarandon: 'Feminism is a bit of an old-fashioned word' | From the Observer | The Observer. Susan Sarandon photographed in Los Angeles for the Observer by Steve Schofield 2013. Photograph: Contour by Getty In Arbitrage, you play the wife of a multi-millionaire hedge fund manager who is stronger than she first appears. It's not the usual character arc for a female support role – was that part of the appeal? Arbitrage Production year: 2012 Country: USA Cert (UK): 15 Runtime: 107 mins Directors: Nicholas Jarecki Cast: Brit Marling, Laetitia Casta, Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, Tim Roth More on this film Absolutely and I was also taken by Nicholas Jarecki's enthusiasm and passion, and Richard Gere, I've known forever and I got to work with him.
I think that what happens in a long relationship [like the one in the film] – and the longest I've ever had was 23 years – is that people have assumptions and firm habits in the way they relate to each other. You're known for playing strong women… Except I don't particularly think of them as strong. Would you call yourself a feminist? What happened when I started a feminist society at school. I am 17 years old and I am a feminist. I believe in gender equality, and am under no illusion about how far we are from achieving it. Identifying as a feminist has become particularly important to me since a school trip I took to Cambridge last year. A group of men in a car started wolf-whistling and shouting sexual remarks at my friends and me.
I asked the men if they thought it was appropriate for them to be abusing a group of 17-year-old girls. For those men we were just legs, breasts and pretty faces. Shockingly, the boys in my peer group have responded in exactly the same way to my feminism. After returning from this school trip I started to notice how much the girls at my school suffer because of the pressures associated with our gender. I decided to set up a feminist society at my school, which has previously been named one of "the best schools in the country", to try to tackle these issues.
Our feminist society was derided with retorts such as, "FemSoc, is that for real? Tone: A Matter of Attitude. Gender-Specific Pronouns And we hope that the writer of the sentence above is working at an all-male school; otherwise, grief will follow him or her all his or her days. Our section on Pronouns already has a paragraph on avoiding gender problems with the singular "his," and we refer you to that document.
Most gender problems can be avoided without the use of the clunky he or she/him or her construction or the more monstrous he/she by using the plural: "Students planning to graduate this spring should see their counselor at once. " An occasional he or she is all right, but after a while it becomes too demanding of the reader's attention, and the device becomes more important than the message. Where a singular pronoun is necessary, use either the masculine or feminine consistently enough to avoid confusion. Avoid Sexist Terminology Avoid language based on hurtful assumptions about gender: The conversation above probably took place between some chap and the "girl" at the front desk.
The gender survey. Male or female leaders in business? Politics of lang hurts women in business. A (female) friend of mine recently sent me an article that made my blood proverbially boil. Its title: Do letters of recommendation actually hurt women when it comes to getting hired or promoted? Interesting question, and definitely one that strikes a chord with me. Ever since I finished high school, I have trodden mostly male-dominated educational and career paths — I have been among the female minority as an undergraduate math and finance major, as a New York investment banker, as a tech entrepreneur, and currently as an MBA student. It’s hard to spend 10 years sharing cubicles, conference rooms and classrooms with an overwhelmingly male population without somehow wondering what’s at work that’s keeping so many women out.
According to this article, which cites ongoing research at Rice University, language might be the problem. Source: physorg.com. The real issue at work, in the words of Hebl, is that “communality is not perceived to be congruent with leadership and managerial jobs.” 1. Gender role. Gender roles may be a means through which one may express their gender identity, but they may also be employed as a means of exerting social control, and individuals may experience negative social consequences for violating them.[2] Various groups have led efforts to change aspects of prevailing gender roles that they believe are oppressive or inaccurate, most notably the feminist movement.
The term was first coined by John Money in 1955 during the course of his study of intersex individuals to describe the manners in which these individuals express their status as a male or female, in a situation where no clear biological assignment exists.[3] Background[edit] Some systems of classification, unlike the WHO, are non-binary or gender queer, listing multiple possible genders including transgender and intersex as distinct categories.[10][11] Gender roles are culturally specific, and while most cultures distinguish only two (boy and girl or man and woman), others recognize more. Dr. Islam Dr. Lord Flashheart - competitive male. Gender neutrality in English. Gender-neutral language is a form of linguistic prescriptivism that aims to minimize assumptions about the gender or biological sex of people referred to in speech or writing. This article discusses aspects of gender neutrality as they relate to the English language. Rationale[edit] Proponents of gender-neutral language argue that the use of gender-specific language often implies male superiority or reflects an unequal state of society.[1][2] According to The Handbook of English Linguistics, generic masculine pronouns and gender-specific job titles are instances "where English linguistic convention has historically treated men as prototypical of the human species.
"[3] Words that refer to women often devolve in meaning, frequently taking on sexual overtones.[4] These differences in usage are criticized on two grounds: one, that they reflect a biased state of society,[5] and two, that they help to uphold that state. Areas[edit] Job titles[edit] Generic words for humans[edit] Pronouns[edit] Introduction to gender and simple tasks. One aspect of English that is certainly easier than in some other languages is gender. In German, for example, nouns can be masculine, feminine or neuter, and the learner has to know which in order to choose the right article, pronoun and adjective ending. For example, and for no apparent reason, a spoon in German is a he (der Loeffel), a fork is a she (die Gabel) and a knife is an it (das Messer)!
In English it is easy; males are a he, females and ships are a she, and everything else (including most animals) is an it. However, this does not mean there is never any problem in choosing the correct pronoun. This is in fact an area that can cause some difficulty - and not only for the non-native speaker. As an example, look at the following sentences and decide which of these pronouns would you put in the gaps: a. him b. her c. him or her d. her or him e. them If you know anyone who can help me, please ask .. to come to my room. Them is a very common choice, especially in British English. Gender Free Language Test. "Danger, Women at Work" 1940s.
Women: Know Your Limits! Harry Enfield - BBC comedy. What if guys and girls swapped roles at the bar? Russell Howard's good news - Bic pens for women. Oakley and gender socialisation. Representing gender in children's reading materials. Would a boy have been shown with flowers in the 1970s? Are girls and boys portrayed differently in children’s reading materials today than in the past? During the 1970s and 80s, studies of children’s reading materials found that males not only featured more than females but also they tended to take the lead roles and were more active than their female counterparts, who were often restricted to traditional stereotyped roles.
Many of these earlier studies of gender in children’s reading material analysed the texts based on their content, which meant that researchers made their own judgements about what was sexist and what was not. Now, however, advances in computer and electronic technology mean that ‘corpus linguistics’ can be used to analyse texts more systematically.
Macalister based his study on New Zealand’s School Journal, a multi-authored journal of prose, drama and poetry, published and distributed to New Zealand school children every year. Men and women: are we really worlds apart? - Features. Do women and men talk differently? And, if they do, why? Kitty Sadler explores the theories Kitty Sadler, 13 March 2011 Everybody knows men are from Mars and women are from Venus. There's no denying it: no education or social conditioning has succeeded in erasing the differences between the language of men and women. For Otto Jespersen and other linguists from the early 20th century, a woman is not a man's counterpart; she is his wife. Despite an investigation into memory in which women came out on top, it was still asserted that it was men who had the higher intellectual capacity - it was easier to succeed in the test when the subject was enough of an airhead that they could make use of "the vacant chambers of the mind".
It's not just old men born in the 19th century who have supported deficiency theory. Lakoff stated that women use phatic (empty) language; apologise too much and can't tell jokes, for example. A stance many readers may find more palatable is the theory of dominance. Feminism defined. International Women's Day rally in Dhaka, Bangladesh, organized by the National Women Workers Trade Union Centre on 8 March 2005. Feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, cultural, and social rights for women.[1][2] This includes seeking to establish equal opportunities for women in education and employment. A feminist advocates or supports the rights and equality of women.[3] Feminist theory, which emerged from feminist movements, aims to understand the nature of gender inequality by examining women's social roles and lived experience; it has developed theories in a variety of disciplines in order to respond to issues such as the social construction of sex and gender.[4][5] Some of the earlier forms of feminism have been criticized for taking into account only white, middle-class, educated perspectives.
This led to the creation of ethnically specific or multiculturalist forms of feminism.[6] History. Language, Gender And Feminism. Feminism "damages" our mother tongue (Gelernter) How can I teach my students to write decently when the English language has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Academic-Industrial Complex? Our language used to belong to all its speakers and readers and writers. But in the 1970s and '80s, arrogant ideologues began recasting English into heavy artillery to defend the borders of the New Feminist state. In consequence we have all got used to sentences where puffed-up words like "chairperson" and "humankind" strut and preen, where he-or-she's keep bashing into surrounding phrases like bumper cars and related deformities blossom like blisters; they are all markers of an epoch-making victory of propaganda over common sense.
We have allowed ideologues to pocket a priceless property and walk away with it. Today, as college students and full-fledged young English teachers emerge from the feminist incubator in which they have spent their whole lives, this victory of brainless ideology is on the brink of becoming institutionalized. E.B. Feminist Philosophy of Language (Stanford Encyclopedia) First published Fri Sep 3, 2004; substantive revision Tue Jun 15, 2010 Much of feminist philosophy of language so far can be described as critical—critical either of language itself or of philosophy of language, and calling for change on the basis of these criticisms. Those making these criticisms suggest that the changes are needed for the sake of feminist goals — either to better allow for feminist work to be done or, more frequently, to bring an end to certain key ways that women are disadvantaged. In this entry, I examine these criticisms.
I also examine work by feminists that seems to suggest some of the criticisms are misplaced: that, for example, philosophy of language is better able to help in feminist projects than critics suppose. My focus in this entry will generally be on the analytic tradition. 1. Language False gender-neutrality There has been a great deal of feminist concern over the supposedly gender-neutral use of terms like ‘he’ and ‘man’. 1.2 Invisibility of women.
Feminist response to Gelernter. By Jess McCabe // 26 February 2008, 20:06 One of the unexpected pleasures of reading right-wing tracts is the excuse to indulge in a heady few minutes of utopian fantasy. According to folk like David Gelernter of the American Enterprise Institute, the feminist revolution is a done deal. In this case, Gelernter sets out how feminists have ruined modern English for sexists such as himself, with our 'he or she' and our 'chairperson'. Encountering such a viewpoint is a refreshing change from the real world, where our language is absolutely permeated with patriarchal norms. Where the casual use of 'he' to refer to both men and women has been replaced with 'guys' (except when it hasn't been replaced at all); words like woman or girl, and all those terms associated with being female or feminine, are seen as heinous insults; I could go on...
"College students and full-fledged young English teachers emerge from [a] feminist incubator in which they have spent their whole lives," Gelernter asserts. Academic response to Gelernter. Lying feminist ideologues wreck English, says Yale prof The danger when encountering a misogynist prescriptive grammar rant as extreme as the one just published by David Gelernter in the Weekly Standard (vol. 13 no. 24, 03/03/2008) is that one might get as angry and fired up and beyond reason as he is. That would be a pity. I will try to remain calm (it's not exactly my forte, though I have occasionally tried it). The right reaction for this one is sadness rather than indignation. Gelernter is a distinguished computer scientist at Yale; yet here he makes a complete fool of himself. His claims are apocalyptic. What, then, is the terrible thing that the style-smashers have done? Some writers now use either he or she, or singular they, or purportedly sex-neutral she, instead of purportedly sex-neutral he, to refer back to generic or quantified human antecedents that are not specifically marked as masculine.
That's it; we're done. Some kind of explanation is needed, surely. Feminist Language. Language and Gender ENGB1. Health and Beauty sample.