Gendersensitive Sprache in Unternehmenstexten

Promoting Gender-Fair Language

“…Reasons may be that they were already familiar with the strong arguments, that the weak message struck the right note, or that they were not motivated to process the information thoroughly on the central route. Messages promoting masculine generics had no influence, which may be caused by the fact that only support for gender-fair language, the less common option (Demarmels & Schaffner, 2011), is perceived as important. Surprisingly, women changed their language use more in the direction of gender-fair language than men.…”

“…For instance, ordinary speakers of German rarely use genderfair language and tend to reject it (Demarmels & Schaffner, 2011), although it is promoted by official guidelines and regulations (e.g. American Psychological Association, 2009;Schweizerische Bundeskanzlei, 2009).…”

Gender-Sensitive Language in German Annual Reports

“…In contrast to most prior studies on gender equality, this study does not focus on the visual representation of women in annual reports or gender diversity at the board level. However, the use of gender-sensitive language in annual reports may be an important component of gender diversity in a firm as it may indicate or relate to the extent to which strong women are integrated in firms and upper management (Demarmels & Schaffner, 2011), indicating whether there is still some degree of gender discrimination in Western economies. Indeed, annual reports serve as appropriate instruments for analyzing this for two reasons.…”

“…It may reflect the firm's attitude to gender diversity as one aspect of corporate governance which diversifies the decision-making process at a board level (Bujaki & McConomy, 2010b;Rose, 2007). Addressing women and men separately in annual reports may also mean better integration of women and men in business and in upper management (Demarmels & Schaffner, 2011). From the perspective of human relation theories (e.g., Hertzberg, 1959;Maslow, 1943;McGregor, 1960), the workforce is an organizational asset which can create substantial value, with employee satisfaction improving retention and motivation, to the benefit of shareholders.…”

“…This study examines whether German listed firms address female annual report readers as often as they address male readers and if so, how this relates to the firms' market value. The language used in financial disclosure or other types of business-related documents could be the reason why women are few and far between in upper management positions (Demarmels & Schaffner, 2011). Indeed, over the last decades, gender equality has been introduced into international law and the role of women has changed (Connell, 2005).…”