Gender

“A businessman is aggressive; a businesswoman is pushy. A businessman is good on details; she is picky. He follows through; she doesn’t know when to quit. He stands firm; she is hard. His judgements are her prejudices. He is a man of the world; she’s been around. He isn’t afraid to say what is on his mind; she is mouthy. He exercises authority diligently; she’s power mad. He’s closemouthed; she’s secretive. He climbed the ladder of success; she slept her way to the top.

From the first moment a child begins to understand the spoken word, they begin to receive messages about societies view of the different sexes.

Language itself can not be deemed good or bad, but it does reflect individual or societal values. The above example displays the way in which language can be used to stereotype gender. Both sexes in the example are behaving in the same way but the language used has separated them, praising the male while disparaging the female. In order to explore the differences between males and females regarding language we must look at whether or not language is sexist, whether it is used differently by different genders and how language has changed, if at all, in relation to these points.

Women’s roles in society have changed considerably over time, and they are now valued more than ever in society. It has been claimed that this has largely arisen due to the media. It has been said that newspapers and magazines now largely avoid sexist language, and even advertisers have changed their depiction of both genders to some degree. Universities have expanded their curricula to include courses for women, even hospital’s have changed their policies pertaining to childbirth in directions originally propounded by women’s movement activities; i.e. developing birthing centers etc. These examples are merely a few of the multitudes of changes that have occurred.

It has been pointed out that the utilization of language differs with gender. For instance, women have more of a tendency to use finer discriminations than men do in some areas such as color terms. Women would be more at ease using the labels ‘Crimson’, ‘ecru’, or ‘beige’, more than men and men would be found to use the simpler version: “It’s blue, not cornflower.” It’s also been noted that men have a tendency to drop more expletives into a conversation than women, although some women do swear, especially younger fem...

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...ten exploited as sexual objects. Women are described by their appearance while men normally are not, the implied message being that looks are more important for women and also the cause of their circumstance.

In drawing an overall conclusion we have found that language itself is not sexist, but has been used by a male dominated society to oppress and denigrate females. Slowly but surely through a wave of feminist movements, this fact is being recognized. Steps are being taken to try and correct this and to give females a chance at being equal and not second class citizens. The more I became engrossed in this assignment the more I realized (being female) that we are being belittled by men’s use of language. It is true that many women apologize for their existence when conversing in general but more especially when interacting with men. This appears to be due to a general feeling of inferiority or lack of confidence. When society itself institutionalizes such attitudes, the language reflects the bias. When everyone in society is truly created equal and treated as such there will be little concern for the asymmetries that exist in the language.

Bibliography:

CrossCultural Psychology