A gender-specific job title is a name of a job that also specifies or implies the gender of the person performing that job, such as stewardess. A gender-neutral job title does not specify or imply gender, such as firefighter or lawyer.
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According to The Handbook of English linguistics, the suffix -man had the meaning "person" in Old English but in present-day English is masculine and can be used to denote people by office and occupation. Examples of this are fireman, salesman, alderman and chairman. While some of these job titles have feminine variants (e.g., alderwoman), others do not because traditionally the positions in question were not occupied by women. Feminine terms such as actress, waitress, and usherette are marked with respect to the masculine, both formally (i.e., something is added to the masculine form) and in the sense that only the masculine form can be used generically to describe a mixed-gender group of people.[1]
These guidelines are by no means a complete standard, as there is still much disagreement on proper usage. Many associations and governments publish handbooks of job titles featuring official recommendations for gender-neutral language.
There is extensive debate as to whether gender-specific job titles are appropriate in a professional setting. This debate reflects the debate over gender-neutral language in general. The side for gender-neutral job titles usually makes an ideological argument, that gender-specific job titles at some level promote sexism in the workplace. The side for the more traditional, gender-specific terms usually makes a practical argument, that replacing the historical terms everywhere they appear (in documents, etc.) would be difficult and expensive, or that it is unnecessary. However, there are many (in particular feminists) who would claim that this argument is really a backlash against the argument for gender-neutral language.
There is much difficulty in resolving this debate, as in the case of gender-neutral language in general; however there is at least one difference. Whereas in the general case, there is often no appropriate singular gender-neutral replacement (e.g. the third person singular pronoun he) (although the use of singular they is increasingly common), there are gender-neutral versions of nearly all job titles.
During the 19th century, attempts to overlay Latin grammar rules onto English required the use of feminine endings in nouns ending with -or. This produced words like doctress and professoress and even lawyeress, all of which have fallen out of use; though waitress, stewardess, and actress are in contemporary use.
Use of the term chairman remains widespread in predominantly male sectors of society, but chairperson or chair is now widespread in society in general, at least in the USA, Canada and increasingly in the U.K.[3] For example, the boards of most Fortune 500 companies in the United States are presided over by a "chairman" and also the overwhelming majority of the (FTSE 100) companies in the United Kingdom have a "chairman", while committees in the United States House of Representatives are presided over by a "chair", as of 2009.[4] Since most of these are however men, a more correct description of the current language situation needs to consider use in organisations whose chairperson is a woman. Less than half of the members of the American Heritage Dictionary's usage panel accept the use of the word chairman in describing a woman.[5]
Some usage guides, such as The Cambridge Guide to English Usage, advocate gender-neutral language in circumstances where all sexes are meant to be included. For instance, a business might advertise that it is looking for a new chair or chairperson rather than chairman. Gender-neutral language proscribes chairman, on the grounds that some readers would assume women and transgendered individuals are implicitly excluded from responding to an advertisement using this word.[6]
Proponents of gender-neutral job titles believe they should be used, especially when referring to hypothetical persons. For example, firefighter instead of fireman; mail carrier, letter carrier, or post worker rather than mailman; flight attendant instead of steward or stewardess; bartender instead of barman or barmaid. In the rare case where no useful gender-neutral alternative is available, they believe both genders should be used.
Proponents of gender-neutral language advocate the use of a neuter form when/where appropriate. For example, a company may seek to fill a vacancy and hire a new chairperson. Since a gendered individual doesn't currently hold the position, its title reverts to a neuter form. Once that position is filled, advocates believe gender can be attached to the title as appropriate (chairman or chairwoman).
Sometimes this formulation can lead to hyper-correcting gender-specific usage, in which women become chairpersons but men remain chairmen. Some women opt to use the word chairman in preference to chairwoman, subject to the style Madam or Mister prefixing the title, which they perceive to be gender-neutral by itself. Particularly in academia, the word Chair is often used to describe the person occupying the chair.
Proponents believe that job titles that add suffixes to make them feminine should be avoided. For example, "usher", not "usherette"; "comedian", not "comedienne". Some of these are almost entirely obsolete now, such as sculptress, poetess, and aviatrix. If gender is relevant, they believe that the words woman or female should be used instead of "lady" ("my grandmother was the first female doctor in the province"), except if the masculine is "lord" (as in "landlady"). However, when a female is in the office of "the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod," it was changed to "the Usher of the Black Rod" in Canada.
Terms such as "male nurse," "male model," or "female judge" are often used when the gender is irrelevant. Many advisors on non-sexist usage therefore deprecate them, saying that the statement of exception indicates that a worker of that gender is somehow an ersatz member of that profession. (Woody Allen jokes that his sister was the first woman to be a male nurse in New York.)
When words have a grammatical gender associated with them, in many languages, there is an absolute requirement for morphological changes to maintain sentence agreement. That is, there is a non-political content to the word changes, or inflection. Nevertheless, gender-identification word endings are sometimes dropped, something that happened often in the former East Germany, for example.[7]