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

8.3 The potential for reform
Unit 8 Language and gender
Section 2 Language variation

Some feminists, such as Dale Spender (1980), see such asymmetries in language as demeaning to women and urge that language should be reformed accordingly. For many feminists it is important to suggest alternative terms to use, thus ’chairperson’ should be used instead of ’chairman’ and ’manager’ should be use for both males and females. Others, such as Deborah Cameron (1985), have suggested that sexism cannot be eradicated simply by changing language items, since this only changes the surface manifestation of beliefs about women. (See also Unit 5, Language and time.)