![]() “Professor Smith and Professor Jones will attend the luncheon (surname and title for both).”Ģ.1 Using feminine and masculine pronouns “Professor Smith (surname and title for a man) and Madeline (first name for a woman) will attend the luncheon.” There should also be consistency in the way women and men are referred to: if one of them is addressed by their name, last name, courtesy title, or profession, the other one should be as well. This is crucial for languages such as Arabic, French, Russian and Spanish. Note for United Nations staff members who draft texts to be translated: If you are the author of a text that is going to be translated, and your text is referring to a specific person, please let translators know what the gender of that person is so they can use appropriate language in their translations. Alternatively, and if the situation permits, you may ask the persons you are addressing or writing about what pronoun and form of address should be used for them. If the staff member appears as “Ms.”, that is the form of address that should be used for her, and female pronouns are appropriate. When referring to or addressing specific individuals, use forms of address and pronouns that are consistent with their gender identity.įor United Nations staff members, you may check the intranet or the organizational or staff directory. For example, “ Every Permanent Representative must submit his credentials to Protocol.” Best practices/strategiesĪ number of strategies can be applied, when speaking or writing in English, to be more gender-inclusive: Some nouns that once ended in -man now have neutral equivalents that are used to include both genders ( police officer for policeman/policewoman, spokesperson for spokesman, chair/chairperson for chairman).Ī challenge for gender-inclusive communication in English is the use of the masculine form by default. Most English nouns do not have grammatical gender forms ( teacher, president), whereas a few nouns are specifically masculine or feminine ( actor/actress, waiter/waitress). In English, there is a difference between “grammatical gender”, “gender as a social construct” (which refers to the roles, behaviours, activities and attributes that a given society at a certain time considers appropriate for men or women) and “sex” as a biological characteristic of living beings.Įnglish has very few gender markers: the pronouns and possessives ( he, she, her and his) and some nouns and forms of address.
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