AVOIDING GENDER BIAS

Gender bias has become an important topic for modern writers of all disciplines. However, gender bias can often go unnoticed by the writer, leading to embarrassing feedback from the reader. Bias also tends to distract readers from the topic on which you are trying to inform them. There are three main types of bias of which all writers must be aware:

Use of the term "Man"

Of the three main types of the gender bias, the use of the word man to denote all people is the easiest to correct. The English language has numerous alternatives which include both men and women in their meaning. For example:

Avoiding use of gender-specific pronouns

The following sentence poses a problem to many, if not all, modern writers:

Whenever a professor assigns a paper, he insists on correct grammar.

This sentence assumes that all professors are men, which, as we all know, is an incorrect assumption. But the English language does not have a gender-neutral, singular pronoun for use when referring to people. Certainly, the writer could not write "When a professor assigns a paper, it insists on correct grammar." Often, a writer will then resort to writing

Using either of these methods might work once, but using them several times over will slow the reading down dramatically and draw attention to their very use. The easiest way to avoid such awkward sentence construction is to convert the noun to its plural form and rewrite the sentence accordingly:

Here are a few more examples:

Sometimes the very nature of the sentence will not allow for the noun to be changed to its plural form. In this case the sentence can be rewritten to avoid the use of a pronoun entirely.

Stereotyping of Gender roles

Although some occupations and hobbies have come to be associated with a certain gender, the association is never absolute. When referring to such occupations, never assume that all individuals in that occupation or hobby are of one gender or the other.

Always remember to be aware of gender bias when proofreading your paper!