Ways of Reading Third Edition - Martin Montgomery, Alan Durant, Nigel Fabb, Tom Furniss, Sara Mills 2007

8.2 Female as downgraded or derogated
Unit 8 Language and gender
Section 2 Language variation

There is a range of words that are used solely for males or females and are therefore gender-specific. Many of these words have a slightly archaic feel about them now - this is an indicator of the way language has been changing rapidly in this area in recent years (see Unit 5, Language and time). So, for example, the word ’poetess’ is only used for women, and the word ’courtier’ is usually only used for men. Many female actors, particularly those who are at the top of the profession, do not use the word ’actress’ to describe themselves, preferring to use the generic ’actor’; this indicates the extent to which ’actress’ is seen to be a demeaning word that describes someone who is not serious about her profession.

Analysis reveals that there are significant patterns in the use of genderspecific language, in that pairs of gender-specific nouns are not always symmetrical; instead, they tend to downgrade (or derogate) women by treating them as if they were only sexual objects rather than full human beings. This emerges in the following sets of pairs:

master/mistress

courtier/courtesan

host/hostess

Most of the terms on the male side have positive or neutral connotations and seem to refer solely to an occupation, whereas the female equivalents often have negative sexual connotations. There is a further asymmetry in the way that women are often referred to as ’girls’. In the following advertisement from The Guardian, ’girl’ is used as if it were the female equivalent of ’man’, whereas ’girl’ generally refers to female children rather than adults:

EFL TEACHERS: required first week in February. Girl with driving licence for Italy; man with experience and girl with degree in German for Germany.

This usage is also common in sports commentaries, where adult women athletes are often described as ’girls’ (or as ’ladies’). However, it should be remembered that ’girl’ is not intrinsically sexist, since it may be used playfully by women to refer to themselves; thus, the context will determine whether the terms are used to express sexism.

Women and men are also named in different ways. Women’s marital status is signalled by the use of the terms Mrs and Miss, for which there are no current male equivalents (Mr does not indicate whether a man is married or single). To resist this, the term Ms was introduced in the 1980s so that women would be able to have an equivalent title to males. Its use has become much more general in recent years, despite a great deal of opposition. Some women still feel wary about using it since it is associated with feminism or is assumed to refer to women who are divorced or separated. Nevertheless, a surprisingly large number of companies and institutions now offer Ms as an option for women to refer to themselves on forms and documents. However, this radical initiative to invent a new term to refer to women has resulted in there now being three terms rather than two, all of them posing problems for women when they are asked for their name.

Analysis also reveals a covert asymmetry in the way that women are referred to in tabloid newspapers, where they are frequently identified by their marital or family status (wife, mother, grandmother) rather than by their profession. This is clear in a headline from the Daily Star: ’MAD GUNMAN HUNT AS WIFE IS SHOT’. It is also quite common in tabloid newspapers for women to be described in terms of their physical appearance (hair colour, body shape and so on), whereas men are usually described with reference to their jobs and age.

Stereotypes about males and females inform the type of language that is used. These stereotypes of masculinity and femininity can influence the way that scientific reports are written, for example in assertions made about the activity of eggs and sperm (Martin, 1997) or when describing animals in nature programmes (Crowther and Leith, 1995). Martin describes the way that scientific reports tend to draw on stereotypical notions of male and female activity and passivity when analysing sperm and eggs; she claims that:

The egg is seen as large and passive. It does not move or journey, but passively ’is transported’, ’is swept’ or even ’drifts’ along the fallopian tube. In utter contrast, sperm are small, ’streamlined’ and invariably active. They ’deliver’ their genes to the egg, ’activate the developmental program of the egg’ and have a velocity which is often remarked upon. Their tails are strong and efficiently powered.

(1997, p. 87)

Despite the fact that both egg and sperm play an active role in conception and both move, scientists still tend to represent conception in terms that accord with the notion of the female element being passive. In a similar way, Crowther and Leith have found that, in nature programmes on television, in descriptions of the way that lions organize themselves in social groups, terms such as ’harems’ have been used to describe a situation where the female lions in a pride allow one male lion to mate with them, excluding all others. In this way, the stereotypes of female passivity associated with the term harem are carried over to the way lion communities are described.