Man-made English due for a service

The development of language is an evolutionary process. One only need cast an eye over the new inclusions in English language dictionaries to prove this. But despite this, we still read of “mankind, businessmen and penmanship” as if women are not part of the human race, are absent in the business world, and for that matter do not record and change and create history through writing (which they certainly have done!). Sexism it appears has been slow to be expunged from the English language.

The male pronouns he, his and him are often used automatically even though the sex of the person is unknown. In fact we are told to assume that “he” in some outdated legal documents should be accepted as meaning men and women! Such distinctive male terms that are supposedly meant to embrace women are in effect a negation and marginalisation of more than half of the human population who are often linguistically invisible. Women are never seen in terms of general or representative humanity while men represent the universal or the human to which women are the “other”.

Language is also used to reflect the sexist stereotypes of certain occupations. Hence we talk about male nurses, woman doctors, male clerks, female principals, firemen and chairmen . And what about expressions such as : “manning the space shuttle, manning the phones, displaying true sportsmanship, doing a man-sized job%E