Categoría: Diversity & Inclusion

Adopting inclusive language can help your business in more ways than one. There are both internal (amongst your employees) and external (amongst customers and clients) benefits that can truly impact your business that is worth keeping in mind. Let’s examine some of the main advantages of inclusive language for your business.

Better Workplace Environment and Employee Engagement

While it’s easy to focus on how your customers and clients would react to the use of inclusive language in your business, you should first look at how this switch will be received internally. 

Using gender inclusive language at work can be a strong step towards diminishing gender inequality both internally and externally. For example, using gender-neutral job titles in your job postings will make it easier for candidates of any gender to view themselves in the role. At the same time, you’ll be helping our society shift away from unconstructive gendered job titles. 

Inclusive language will help attract a diverse pool of job candidates, and will help retain them as well. Both millennials and Gen Z workers tend to seek out companies that prioritize fairness and equality in the workplace. Using inclusive language is a subtle switch you can make to show your employees that you actually adhere to the values your company stands for. 

Improved Customer Perception

Circling back to your customers and clients, you will find that using inclusive language can help you appeal to a more broad customer base and can help you make a good first impression when launching in new markets where gender inclusivity is a priority. Customers want to see that a brand is thinking about them and their needs. Using gender neutral language helps you relate better to those customers and makes them feel more included. 

Of course, your commitment here can’t end with just inclusive language. Your commitment to inclusion and diversity should also be apparent in your hiring practices, product development, and marketing campaigns. On both a public facing and internal front, you need to be practicing what you preach in every area of your business. Using inclusive language is a good method to help further a mission of inclusion, but not the only one. 

Enhanced Social Responsibility

As a business, you should aim to be an authoritative and responsible part of your community, no matter how big or small that community is. Inclusive language is something companies should take on as part of their social responsibility. This effort to be socially responsible may not have visible benefits right away, but it is an important part of running a business. Being socially responsible and living by your values will pay off in the end by helping attract a diverse workforce, making customers feel included, and making your business feel more approachable.

How to Incorporate Inclusive Language 

When it comes time to start incorporating inclusive language into your business, you’ll need to work with your localization provider about how to proceed. The movement for gender inclusive language is rapidly evolving and varies by location, so you need input from in-country specialists to adapt properly. The discussion surrounding inclusive language is not at the same stage in every country and it’s an emotional topic that will elicit different reactions from different customers and employees. It’s important to collaborate with a localization expert who can help you navigate these sensitive waters. 
Adding gender-inclusive language to your style guide is a great first step and these guidelines can provide your company with a road map toward inclusive language.

Language can influence how we see the world in terms of gender and it is also one of the many ways a culture manifests. We know that some cultures are more conservative than others, some are more open-minded, some still have males as dominant figures, and others hold more antiquated views. Language can be a very powerful tool to change these realities and enable us to become a more inclusive society, where gender, race, age, etc. do not play a role in the treatment a person receives.

Let’s examine how language shapes our perception of gender and how this issue can be addressed. 

Why Gender-Neutral Terms Matter

For those who don’t spend much time thinking about how our language choices influence the world around us, the debate over gender-neutral language choices may not seem all that important. However, studies have shown that gendered language can have repercussions. A 2019 study found that using gender-neutral pronouns actually increases positive attitudes towards women and LGBTQ+ community. This happens by reducing the prominence of male identity, which can lead to less gender-based bias.

Language can direct or redirect our attention to certain aspects of reality. For example, someone who is a bilingual Spanish and English speaker, may find themselves less likely to use male and feminine distinctions when they speak English compared to when they speak Spanish. While it can be difficult to change an entire culture, introducing gender-neutral language options can have an impact on the people who employ or are exposed to them. For example, Japanese is another language that has gender influences. The Japanese language reinforces how men and women should speak, with women being expected to be more polite, indirect, and subtle. Many different languages have inverted gender for the same nouns or concepts, but not all languages have marked gender. English does not, which makes it easier to convert English language choices to gender neutrality. Introducing gender-neutral language choices in Japan could lead to less of those stereotypical gender reinforcements. 

Gender Prejudice in Language

Nouns across many different languages can be gendered. Whether or not a noun is considered female or male can alter how the speaker perceives that specific word and often impacts the adjectives they choose to describe that noun. Research has uncovered how people describe objects often correlates with the object’s given gender in a language. For example, in German, the word “bridge” has a feminine pronoun, so Germans are more likely to call bridges beautiful or elegant (traditionally feminine traits). In Spanish, the word “bridge” is masculine and is typically referred to as strong or sturdy. It’s easy to see how gendered language can, in a certain way, limit us or lead to certain prejudices.

Does Language Shape How We Think?

It appears that language does shape how we think. As we can see from the examples above, the gender association words have in different languages does have an impact in how we perceive reality. Once you acknowledge that, you can start making conscious decisions in word choices that are more gender neutral and inclusive. Little by little, languages can become more inclusive by means of their own speakers and effect change in the culture.

An international debate has broken out surrounding how to make our language choices more inclusive. While some are pushing back against modernizing language to be more inclusive when it comes to gender — most notably the French — others are more willing to adapt. 

In May of 2021, France’s education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, announced a ban would be placed on the use of writing methods designed to make the French language more gender-neutral in schools. While not all may agree with this firm stance, there is no denying that adapting certain languages like French to be inclusive poses more of a challenge than it does in the English language. Let’s examine why the English language is easier to adapt to gender neutrality. 

How Language Structure Comes into Play

From the start, English has the upperhand when it comes to making changes towards inclusivity. Most European languages assign genders to nouns, whereas English nouns are typically genderless. This lack of gendered nouns gives English speakers a major headstart when it comes to making their language choices more inclusive. While pronouns are often assigned a gender in English (she/her/hers and he/him/his), in many cases you can swap in the gender neutral pronouns they/them/theirs. Even though the use of they/them/theirs isn’t quite grammatically correct every time one is used as a gender neutral option, these word choices can feel more natural to implement since they are already a part of English speakers’ daily vocabularies. 

Other languages that place more of an emphasis on gender, such as Spanish, don’t necessarily have gender-neutral alternatives at their disposal. For example, some Spanish speakers are beginning to use the term “Elle” instead of “Ella” (feminine) or “él” (masculine) as a gender-neutral replacement. Because this term is so new and not exclusively accepted as an official word, there is still pushback by those who don’t want to switch to a more inclusive language. 

Cultural Differences

How a culture feels about language can also make the transition to gender neutral language easier. English is a more casual language where it’s usually okay to refer to people by their name. This eliminates the need to define their pronouns ahead of time. In some other languages, using someone’s name instead of their pronoun is considered rude. When language choices can have a deep impact on your social interactions and relationships, making gender neutral language choices can require more careful navigation.

Arguments for Both Sides

As can be expected, the gender neutral language movement in the English language speaking community has both supporters and detractors. Supporters tend to argue that the use of gender-specific language often implies male superiority and can reflect an unequal society.  Some supporters also express concern around the impact gendered language can have on children, as they believe the words children are exposed to can affect their perceptions of the gender-appropriateness of certain careers which can limit the career paths some women pursue when they enter the workforce. For example, using the term firefighter instead of fireman is much more inclusive. The same theory applies to policemen versus police officers. Using the gender neutral alternative makes it so women can more easily see themselves in these roles. 

On the opposing side, critics worry that these changes can lead to awkward and grating language constructions. For example, while those in support of making the English language more inclusive feel the use of the word “human” can be used instead of “man” or “they”, critics fear these replacements will make the English language less elegant and more confusing. 

How to Make Language More Inclusive

For instances where the noun is not gender neutral by default, there are new options arising for those looking to incorporate more inclusive language into conversations and written text. Alongside using they/them/theirs when looking to avoid using gendered pronouns, here are some examples of English words that are gendered and how you can work around them for the sake of inclusivity. 

• Use “Mx” in lieu of Mr, Ms, Mrs, or Miss
• Use “partner” in lieu of husband, wife, boyfriend, or girlfriend
• Use “sibling” in lieu of sister or brother
• Use “child” instead of son or daughter