Talk:Gender-specific job title

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[edit] NPOV Issues

The "Generally accepted writing coventions" section needs to be redone to conform to NPOV. First, I think the title should be changed, unless good evidence can be provided to show that these conventions are indeed "generally accepted" throughout the English speaking world.

More importantly, when ever it says that something "should" be done, it should be rephrased with a qualifier - like "according to gender-neutral standars this should or shouldn't be done." For example at the begining where it says "Gender-neutral job titles should be used, especially to refer to hypothetical persons..." That should be changed to something like "proponents of gender-neutral language feel that gender-neutral job titles should be used..."

--Blackcats 20:23, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)Blackcats

I agree completely. Ruakh 03:22, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I made the changes discussed here. I removed the NPOV flag... let's see what happens. Feco 21:17, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Other Stuff

Actually in the UK it's more normal to be a 'chair'. Totally gender neutral. Not lady chair or whatever, and certainly not lady chairman/woman.

Secretlondon 19:16, Sep 25, 2003 (UTC)

My observations re specific cases:

• Here in Britain, "waiter" and "waitress" are still the usual terms. Some talk of "waitressing", almost the only example of a gender-specific verb I've heard of.
• In the plural, there seems to be a split between "actors" and "actors and actresses", but "she's an actor" is rarely heard in my experience.
• I've noticed that the Americans among you have "freshman" as a gender-neutral term. The only equivalent British term is "fresher".

-- Smjg 11:17, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

You stated that a midwife can be of any gender. While this is technically true, it's hard to imagine how anyone would consider a word that contains "wife" as gender neutral. Nurse shares its origins with "nun" and is also used to describe a biological function specific to females; it is hard to imagine how anyone would consider "nurse" a gender neutral word.

[edit] -man suffix

Most words adding the -man suffix derive from the Old English usage, which is gender neutral, and is roughly equivalent to "person", and used to describe people. The most basic descriptions being "wyfman" (female person) and "waepman" (male person). 81.104.165.184 18:17, 2 June 2006 (UTC)