Do masculine pronouns used generically lead to thoughts of men?

Cole, C. Maureen; Hill, Frances A.; Dayley, Leland J.

doi:10.1007/bf00289802

Cited by 38 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…A strong case can be made for our less stringent categorization procedure, based on people's tendency to assume that a person or animal is male in the absence of strong cues that it is female. Such a tendency has been shown in studies on the People = Male bias (Cole, Hill, & Dayley, 1983;Hamilton, 1991) and the Animal = Male bias (Lambdin, Greer, Jibotian, Wood, & Hamilton, 2003). Hamilton et al and Cole et al found that when a person is referred to without any cues about sex, that person is generally believed to be male.…”

Section: Survey Instrumentmentioning

confidence: 82%

Gender Stereotyping and Under-representation of Female Characters in 200 Popular Children’s Picture Books: A Twenty-first Century Update

et al. 2006

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Gender stereotyping and under-representation of girls and women have been documented in children's picture books in the past, in the hope that improvements would follow. Most researchers have analyzed awardwinning books. We explored sexism in top selling books from 2001 and a 7-year sample of Caldecott award-winning books, for a total of 200 books. There were nearly twice as many male as female title and main characters. Male characters appeared 53% more times in illustrations. Female main characters nurtured more than male main characters did, and they were seen in more indoor than outdoor scenes. Occupations were gender stereotyped, and more women than men appeared to have no paid occupation. Few differences were found between Caldecott award books and other books. A comparison of our book sample to 1980s and 1990s books did not reveal reduced sexism. The persistence of sexism in picture books and implications for children and parents are discussed.

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Section: Survey Instrumentmentioning

confidence: 82%

Gender Stereotyping and Under-representation of Female Characters in 200 Popular Children’s Picture Books: A Twenty-first Century Update

et al. 2006

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“…Martyna (1978) attacked the use of he to refer to both sexes on the grounds of: (1) ambiguity-it may be difficult to determine whether a particular he is meant to include or exclude she; (2) exclusiveness-the injustice of excluding a female interpretation; (3) inequity-the nonparallelism between the masculine and the feminine pronouns. Although Cole, Hill, and Dayley (1983) found no support for a pure generic he pronoun effect on individuals' tendency to think more often of male referents, some evidence was found for a masculine bias when the word man was combined with he. MacKay and Fulkerson (1979) asked their participants to judge whether women were included in sentences that contained masculine pronouns, and they measured participants' reaction time and error rate.…”

mentioning

confidence: 73%

Acceptability of Sexist Language among Young People in Hong Kong

Lee

2007

Sex Roles

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The purpose of the present study was to provide information on the acceptability of some selected genderexclusive and inclusive usages and lexis in Hong Kong English. They include the selection of generic he or genderneutral pronouns anaphoric to indefinite pronouns (e.g., everybody, someone) and occupational terms (e.g., doctor, lawyer, cleaner). A number of generic nouns and sexunspecified nouns with or without morphologically marked gender were also examined (e.g., chairman vs chairperson, fireman vs fire fighter). The findings reveal that linguistic sexism is still prevalent in Hong Kong. However, the strong feminist movement in Western countries and in the education field has had an impact among young people, some of whom have shown concern to avoid gender-biased language. Although consistent gender differences were not found in the present study, some significant differences between men and women were revealed; a relatively higher proportion of women opted for the coordinate pronoun he/she and gender-neutral occupational terms, whereas more men opted for generic they.

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“…This practice has been objected to as reflecting an androcentric world-view, insofar as it can be unclear whether the forms include both men and women or whether they refer to men only and, as Briere and Lanktree (1983), Cole, Hill and Dayley (1983), Hamilton (1988), and others have shown, people rarely conceptualize women when masculine "generics" are used. A strategy adopted by writers to avoid masculine generic pronouns is the use of paired pronoun expressions such as he/she, he or she, him or her and his or her.…”

Section: Masculine Generic Constructionsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Gender Voices in Hong Kong English Textbooks—Some Past and Current Practices

2008

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This paper seeks to investigate whether recent improvements in the status of women in Hong Kong are reflected in patterns of gender representation in Hong Kong secondary English textbooks. A comparison of ten recently published books which are currently in use with ten published in the late 1980s/early 1990s and no longer in use revealed that women appeared more frequently in the former, and that greater use was made of gender-inclusive pronouns and the neutral address title Ms. Nevertheless some writers, it was found, continue to perpetuate the stereotyped image of women as weaker than men, and as operating primarily within domestic rather than social domains. The "male-first" phenomenon and the visual under-representation of women are still prevalent in recent textbooks.

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Do masculine pronouns used generically lead to thoughts of men?

Cited by 38 publications

References 6 publications

Gender Stereotyping and Under-representation of Female Characters in 200 Popular Children’s Picture Books: A Twenty-first Century Update

Gender Stereotyping and Under-representation of Female Characters in 200 Popular Children’s Picture Books: A Twenty-first Century Update

Acceptability of Sexist Language among Young People in Hong Kong

Gender Voices in Hong Kong English Textbooks—Some Past and Current Practices

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