Let's put gender equity into words

By ANN WEATHERALL*

Have you heard about the father and son who were involved in a serious car accident? The father died on impact but the boy was rushed to hospital. On arrival at accident and emergency, the doctor exclaimed: "That is my son." How is this possible?

In a sample of people to whom I gave the riddle, most were unable to reply. The answer once you are told is blindingly obvious - the doctor was the boy's mother.

If asked who is the captain of the New Zealand cricket team, how would you answer? Probably Stephen Fleming. But that assumes the question asked about men's cricket. Emily Drumm is captain of the New Zealand women's cricket team.

Certainly, New Zealand women were among the first in the world to get the vote. Indeed, women do now fill our country's top political and judicial roles. Does this mean New Zealand has become the society the women's movement burned their bras for? A reasonable answer is "not yet".

Young women today have opportunities of which their mothers and grandmothers could only dream. But the trick questions above illustrate that socially and culturally our habit of thought remains predominantly male-centred. Women are still what Simone de Beauvoir first observed more than 50 years ago - the "other" or the second sex.

Our society has more women leaders, chief executives and entrepreneurs than ever. But earning low wages, being subject to violence and shouldering the burden of childcare is the experience of more women than men. How can sense be made of the seemingly paradoxical case of women's status? The successful few at the top and the disadvantaged many at the bottom of the social ladder?

Language has long been an area explored by thinkers for clues into the dominant social and moral order. For example, in her classic analysis of women's oppression, de Beauvoir noted that in the male-dominated culture she lived in, the term "man" was used to designate human beings in general.

Policies established in the 1980s against the use of sexist language have meant, at least in the public sector, that terms such as mankind, chairman and manmade have been superseded by the more politically correct terminology of humankind, chairperson and artificial. Gone are fishermen, policemen and air-hostesses. Now we have fishers, police officers and flight attendants.

Alongside the language shifts, positive social change has occurred. The police, for instance, have achieved gender balance in their annual intake of new recruits. So the neutral label police officer is appropriate because it can refer to a woman or a man.

But the neuterisation of job titles is not a total success. Where gender segregation has not been challenged, neutral terms may obscure continued male dominance. The use of the term firefighters, for example, hides the reality that the vast majority of paid firefighters are men.

Neuterisation in other areas of our language also serves to hide women's continued social disadvantage. The term "partner abuse" implies a problem for both women and men equally. But surveys repeatedly report that it is overwhelmingly men who are the offenders and women the victims in physical and sexual assaults. Why not just call it wife-bashing?

What would de Beauvoir think of the censoring of "man" as a generic term from New Zealand English? Would she declare it a sign that women's oppression had ended?

She might simply point to the common use of "guys" as a newer and subtler indicator of men's dominance in language and society. Guys is meant to refer to both women and men, which means it's not sexist, right? Remember though, the same argument was used in defence of "man" and "he" to refer to people in general.

Germaine Greer also discussed the relationships between language and women's status in society. For instance, she pointed out that all the linguistic emphasis of words and labels describing sex has been placed on the penetrative act - shag, for example - performed by an active male on a passive female.

I found support for Greer's ideas in a study I conducted on the metaphorical construction of sexual experience in New Zealand. Men's sexuality was culturally and linguistically celebrated as virile and potent by metaphors such as "stud" and "tiger". In contrast, active women's sexuality was derided by terms and phrases such as "slag" and "hangipants".

The metaphors in my research also pointed to the darker and more abusive side of men's sexuality. Two disturbing metaphors I found which were culturally salient in our society were "sweating like a rapist" and "if there's grass on the pitch, she's old enough to play". It seems unlikely that such abhorrent ideas would occur in a society that respects all its members.

There is some cause for celebration. As Sandra Coney has written, we are a nation of "gutsy girls and stroppy sheilas". The likes of Theresa Gattung, Helen Clark, Margaret Wilson, Silvia Cartwright and Sian Elias have helped to put the "grr" into girls.

But phrases such as "petticoat Parliament" show that women's success, albeit limited, is viewed culturally with ambivalence. Our language reflects a cultural and psychological resistance to that success.

Overt forms of discrimination against women have been removed, giving a lucky few the opportunity to excel. But it is not time to be complacent. Many women are still struggling in dead-end jobs and on poor pay. Commonly women work a double shift of paid employment and unpaid domestic work. Too many women live in fear of violence against themselves and their children.

If our goal is a fair and just society, we must continue to fight against blatant discrimination and try to improve the economic status of disadvantaged social groups. We must also examine and challenge the subtle aspects of men's dominance and women's oppression. Both boys and girls can do anything, so it behoves us to make a society where they are able to do that.

A critical examination of our language and culture shows we have a long way to go towards a society completely free of gender bias.

* Ann Weatherall is a senior lecturer in Victoria University's school of psychology. She is the author of Gender, Language and Discourse.

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