gender equality – Pike & Hurricane

“Gender ideology”: The case of Colombia

Tanya Rahozina — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 15:12:13 +0000

In this interview, I talked to my former classmate Diana Rocío Rodríguez Benítez who specializes in the evolution of ‘gender ideology’ as a phenomenon pertinent to the Americas and Europe. In particular, Diana’s academic interest lies in discovering the role which anti-‘gender ideology^[1] has played in Colombia since 2016. This was the year when the landmark peace deal between the government and FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) was signed but did not come into force, as the referendum on the deal turned out to be the victory of the no-vote. However, after the revision of the agreement, which removed gender focus from the document, it was ratified by both Houses of Congress. As Diana researched the subject in-depth, I wanted to hear her opinion on the role of ‘gender ideology’ misperception within the scope of the entire nation and whether one might expect the situation to change in the foreseeable future.

Tanya: Could you please say a few words about your master’s thesis?

Diana: I wrote about ‘gender ideology’. It was a discourse analysis based on four actors because all these actors were against this so-called ‘gender ideology’. This created the political agenda against diversity. Everything that seems different is something that you cannot accept within what is considered to be right.

T: Could you make some examples of how the actors that you talk about use ‘gender ideology’?

D: The first thing I would say is that the whole gender ideology is a fake construct. It is not something that is legit in academic terms. Today everybody knows its meaning, but before 2015 it was something nobody knew about. It was created by the Catholic church, and then it evolved into the whole movement.

Secondly, here in Colombia it is linked to the decision by the Constitutional Court that every school had to review their Code of Conduct keeping in mind that every school should have an inclusive environment. To which they (anti-gender agents) said that this was the violation of the schools’ and parents’ autonomy to teach kids about sexuality and diversity.

It was a decision based on the precedent. There was a very sad case of the teenage boy Sergio Urrego. At the school he studied the director and the psychologists found a photo of him and another male student kissing. They then forced the two of them to come out publicly, which they hadn’t done before. And because of that Sergio killed himself.

In Colombia we have this legal mechanism: when your fundamental rights are violated you can write a piece of paper and then send it to the Supreme Court. Sergio’s mom did that, and then the Constitutional Court issued a ruling which guaranteed the rights that were violated. Based on this ruling they created different orders, and one of them was the one I mentioned regarding the Code of Conduct^[2]. All of this happened during the referendum and peace agreement negotiations, and the referendum had this strong gender focus. The four actors whom I then analysed in my dissertation also said that peace agreement was going to turn our kids gay, and was filled with gender ideology, which was not true––it was fake.

T: How unpopular was the decision and how big was the anti-gender ideology movement?

D: A lot of people went out to protest it. The leaders were far-right politicians, and the Catholic church together with other Evangelical church. And it was huge. I remember reading and watching the news, and there were a lot of angry people protesting. At that time the Minister of education was a lesbian woman. The protesters went around saying that she is lesbian who is trying to mess our kids. It was quite huge not only in Bogota, but all over the country.

T: Did they achieve anything?

D: There is no causal relationship, as there is not enough evidence to link one event to the other, but this topic was without a doubt something that people talked about and feared. I don’t know if they achieved their goal, but, for sure, the no-vote won, and this ruling is not being executed. I am doing volunteer work with the mom of Sergio. She created an NGO^[3]. And nothing has changed during these four years. The decision is not on hold, but there is a lack of the political will.

T: Are there a lot of similar cases?

D: Not a lot, but this case was huge because there was the decision of the Constitutional Court. Not a lot, but a few. Not only in school environments, but also other contexts when people are the victims of discrimination, which is a crime.

T: Can people seek any legal help in such situations?

D: Of course. If there is a judicial proof that someone was discriminated based on their sexual orientation or gender identity, religion, ethnicity, then yes, the offender can face jail time.

T: Are there any legal instruments that can support them?

D: There are. We actually have a lot of legal instruments and institutions, which on paper look very good and progressive and guarantee rights. But I would say we are not there yet. We are not a progressive society. You have all of these mechanisms, legal and disciplinary, but when the time comes for you to validate your rights, it is hard. If you go to a state institution, most of the people there have no clue about gender focus or what LGBTQ stands for. It is hard, but the instruments and mechanisms are there.

T: Would you call it a problem of a conservative mindset and the lack of awareness?

D: Yes, this is a country which is very conservative. We don’t see us as a cohesive society, we don’t stand for our rights. We have never done this. We have this word in Spanish ‘’arribista” which means that you always want something for yourself, something that you don’t have. You want to go to the best school, you want to have the last iPhone, this superficial lifestyle, but it is not only about the iPhone. I do think that these things are connected to each other. We are a very unequal country. Going to school here is a privilege. Reading the news in English is an incredible privilege. Most people see what the local news show.

T: You stress the fact that Colombia is not a very wealthy country, however did you find any similarities between Colombian case and developed states?

D: I think that ontological security is the key. It is how people feel insecure when their basis is being disturbed. If your whole life you have had a certain mindset, and then all of a sudden, although it has been years of progress, but people think that it is all of a sudden, then they say something about gender, diversity and inclusion, different ways to do things and the structures. But definitely there are countries where institutions are not strong and people are not that educated, then things tend to stick more.

T: Are there any examples of people waking up and realizing that it is actually a delusion that is being promoted? Or are we in a hopeless position?

D: I don’t think people realize that it was a delusion. Here it was crazy because by the time of the referendum there was this person who was the press secretary of the whole no-campaign. After the vote, he gave an interview in which he literally said that people were tricked, and they used different discourses based on the socio-economic levels. Here we have numbers. Houses are ranked on the scale from one to five, one being the poorest and five being the richest. So, if you live in a house, but you don’t have access to education or social care, then you are one. If you are middle class, you are three. They created strategies depending on this division. He said to the poorest ones that the deal was going to spread the ‘gender ideology’ because they knew that people were afraid of it. There are people who believe that ‘gender ideology’ is true. It is something you have to be aware of. One of them being my aunt. You don’t have to look any further. Even in my family. I am quite hopeless.

T: You often underscore that you have a strong belief in the youth. Do you think with the change of generation it might be different?

D: I hope so, I really do. I am doing some volunteering work with the Truce Commission, and I am working with a couple of interns. Surely, they are privileged, but still they are pretty smart and aware of all of this. I also think that one thing is here in Bogota, women who are privileged, and a completely different thing if you go to the jungle, the Amazon region, or to other places where you don’t even have running water. So, I wouldn’t dare to have an answer to that as I am not in touch with the younger generation. We will see. I really hope so.

Notes:

[1] ‘Gender ideology’ is the phenomenon in which people defend the traditional family values, where female and male roles are established. The term is closely connected to the debates within the Catholic Church. Anti-’gender ideology’ is directed against gender, and counteracts questioning of the binary gender model.

[2] On the website of the Constitutional Court of Colombia they refer to the codes as “manuals of coexistence”

[3] Fundación Sergio Urrego

Related articles:

Gender Is Bending and We Should Embrace the Change

Photo Credits:

Bandera arcoiris, by Natalio Pinto, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

By Crawford Jolly on Unsplash

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The legality of abortion

Elena Wasserzier — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 14:50:09 +0000

On the 28th of September, the Amnesty International Student Association of Malmö University hosted a movie screening about the fight for safe abortion rights in Ireland, since the date also hallmarks the international day of safe abortions. The association made use of the occasion to remind people all over the world of women’s reproductive rights.

Additionally to the movie screening, a song written by Robin Atiken about “the legality of abortion” was performed. The song renders facts that can be found on the official website of Amnesty International and it constitutes a display of circumstances and reality for women across the globe.

The lyrics are presented below:

The legality of abortion is seen as somewhat crude

but listen as I sing, it will help you out dude

A quarter of pregnancies,

end in this procedure

So take that at your leisure.

If safety’s your worry then listen don’t hurry

25 million unsafe abortions,

Are done each year

This whole issue brings me a harsh tear

It it were safe,

Women would be saved

Are you hearing me quite clear?

A medical error called

the “chilling effect”

Where the line of abortion is not

scientifically checked

Post abortion care goes down

That makes all of us some clowns

If you shun the operation

A stigma will be the occasion

Our culture will be shamed

And we’ll all be to blame

CHORUS: x3

Why fight?

It’s a woman’s right.

If you disagree you can choose as you please.

People are delusional, when they think we have already achieved equality in regards to the sexes. This is not the case and the world still struggles to change old patriarchal patterns towards equity and equality for all. Even as recently as 2020, reproductive rights remain a major element in women’s fight for equality in multiple countries across the globe.

As depicted in the movie “When Women Won”, Ireland has just allowed the right for safe and legal abortions in 2018, which is only two years ago. Before that, women had to travel to England, literally cross a country border, to receive a safe abortion and be able to decide over their own body and their reproductive rights. The referendum which was adopted on the 28th of May 2018, granted the repeal of the almost constitutional abortion ban.

This illustrates that the world is very far from the progress women’s rights advocates aspire to see. Literal baby steps are taken in regard to women’s reproductive rights, because Ireland is not the only country which is late in history. The USA, for example has shown in the last couple of years that history can also go backwards in its timeline, when a couple of states, e.g. Virginia, decided to ban abortions and to deem it illegal. When this did not work out completely, the state aggravated its abortion laws, which made it a lot harder for women to seek an abortion when needed.

However, Virginia was eventually sued over their unfair abortion laws by Planned Parenthood, Center for Reproductive Rights, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia. The lawsuit considered the following laws as “burdensome and medically unnecessary”:

Second trimester abortions must be performed in a hospital;

Abortions must only be performed by a physician;

Medical facilities providing more than four first trimester abortions per month must undergo strict licensing requirements;

Patients must undergo an ultrasound and counseling 24 hours before an abortion, requiring them to make two trips to a clinic; and

Abortion is a class 4 felony if the requirements are not followed

The plaintiffs claimed that “the Commonwealth of Virginia has spent over four decades enacting layer upon layer of unnecessary and onerous abortion statutes and regulations.”

The list goes on: El Salvador and Nicaragua, in Central America, still enforce discriminatory laws that ban abortions in almost all conditions. More than 40% of the world’s women in childbearing age live in countries where, abortion is medically either very restricted, not accessible at all or banned and illegal, with partly grave penalties as a result of violation of the law.

Related articles:

Politics of fertility

Politically conscious art as backlash: Amanda Palmer’s “There Will Be No Intermission”

Picture Credits:

The Handmaid’s Tale, by Victoria Pickering, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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International Women’s Day 2020: Malmö

Merle Emrich — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 15:56:57 +0000

Ta Natten Tillbaka

[7 March 2020] Protest against violence against women and/or trans people.

Women’s March

[8 March 2020]

by Merle Emrich

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Period: a taboo without borders

Pauline Zaragoza — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 14:39:09 +0000

Unclean, impure, dirty, gross, taboo, embarrassing.Those “positive” words are usually used as describers when it comes to period concerns. Nowadays, periods still have negative meanings in societies all around the world whatever the social classes, origins or geographical localization. Most women on earth are concerned by this taboo surrounding this normal body function. Issues come when sometimes this stigma and the lack of access to menstrual products have terrible consequences.

What is that? Yes, it is red blood

Period as a monthly event appears when blood and tissues from the uterus are coming out of the vagina. It usually appears during the puberty period between 12-14 years old, or even earlier/later. As an average, a woman has between 4 and 5 days of bleeding which represents 2250 days of her life, in other words seven years of period. This mean a lot of time spending to wonder about having a pad or a tampon, where to find one, how to hide it, how to handle the pain or even how to make sure that you don’t have a stain on your pants (we all have this story asking to our bestie.s to check our back).

This discomfort regarding periods is mainly represented through how the media are representing this monthly surprise in most women’s lives. The market of “feminine hygiene products” represents a huge source of money, between 20,6 billion $ and 37,5 billion $ and it is estimated to 52 billion $ in 2023. In most of the ad for menstrual products, the periodic blood is blue instead of red. As an important source of information, media with their audience are powerful as they influence the representation of period. This blue blood, as misrepresenting the reality, sends a confusing message and reinforces this vision of disgust towards period; whereas blood is regularly shown when it is not coming from a vagina such as in horror films, medical series, war movies…. However, some companies are taking action such as the ad campaign Blood Normal which aims to show the real red blood and to deconstruct all the stigmas surrounding menstruation to make it normal. But despite this rise of awareness, shame and stereotypes are still deeply settled.

Globalized stereotypes and a dramatic lack of menstrual hygiene

Those stigmas and beliefs about periods can have bad consequences in terms of education, job access, health and more. In addition, some countries or even religions have specific beliefs that are fueling the global shame about menstruation for girls. In Iran, as a sign of misinformation, 48% of girls believe that period is a disease. In Japan, women are not allowed to become sushi masters because it is said that menstruation causes an “imbalance in taste”. Moreover, in India, during their period women are not allowed to be in the kitchen and cannot water plants because the myth says they can poison food. Also in the country, buying pads is expensive and also taboo, 90% of women in rural areas don’t have access to it. As a result, 28% of girls are not going to school and instead they are using dangerous objects to catch the blood such as newspaper, ash, wood shavings, and more. In Nepal, there is a practice named Chhaupadi that aims to banish menstruate women and send them in dangerous outdoors called ‘menstruation huts” owing to the impurity of the period. Even if this practice has been banned recently, it’s still continued in fact, mostly in rural areas. This tradition implies risks of rape, disease or even death as shown by recent cases of girls bitten by snakes. In Nepal as well as India, during this time of the month, women are not allowed to enter in “clean” and holy places like temples.

Also, women in western countries are concerned by this taboo. In England, almost 138 000 girls are missing school because they cannot afford menstrual products. In many states in the United States, pads and tampons are considered “luxury good”. In Western countries, homeless women are mostly confronted with the dilemma between buying food or buying menstrual products. In addition, another effect of this spread of negative vision of menstruations is the “period shaming”. This period shaming can lead to suicide, some people might think it’s hard to believe it but it’s a reality. In 2017 a 12 years old Indian girl killed herself after her teacher humiliated her because of a stain due to menstruation. Same story in 2019 with a 14 year old Kenyan school girl who had her first period during school lesson was reportedly branded ‘dirty’ and expelled from the classroom. Period is normal, natural, and healthy and some initiatives try to defy this global taboo.

Period as a political issue: a rise of actions

Facing those issues, some people have decided to take actions. In India, a man named Arunachalam Muruganantham, has invented a machine that dispenses menstrual products at a low cost in order to increase access for women in his country despite the people’s opposition in his village. Moreover, numerous humanitarian collections have been settled around the world to respond to this need like in France (Règles Élémentaires) or the association Period which aims to fight against “period poverty”. Also, on a larger scale, some politicians have tackled this health issue. Recently, Scotland has been the first country in the world to provide free pads and tampons. Indeed, almost 10% of girls in UK are not able to afford menstrual products and some are using unhygienic products such as rags, toilet paper or newspapers because of the expansive price of pads and tampons. Before this, the state of New York was one of the first to announce that all public schools in the state will dispense free tampons and pads in order to fight menstruation taboos and make school safe and comfortable for girls.

Access to menstrual hygiene should represent a main issue in the global agenda as it is hard for women to confront this event with safety and dignity. Also, menstruation includes numerous other problems such endometriosis or toxic shock syndrome scandal. One of the solutions might be a cultural change in order to normalize menstruation and destroy taboos around this natural process. Of course, it is taking time because those stereotypes are deeply rooted in our societies. Menstrual hygiene must be a right and girls should not be blamed or shamed about it, on the contrary it should be a normal to easily access menstrual products, sanitation and hygiene. Period is a cultural power, changing perceptions about it will help to change the rules of the game and to empower women as it normally should be.

by Pauline Zaragoza

Photo Credits

peeled pomelo, Charles Deluvio

melting popsicle, Erol Ahmed

Nepal, World Bank Photo Collection, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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Gendered power relations: the toll of austerity

Merle Emrich — Mon, 06 Jan 2020 19:24:00 +0000

Angela Merkel is not only one of Germany’s longest serving chancellors – next to Konrad Adenauer and Helmut Kohl – but also the country’s first female chancellor and arguably the world’s most powerful woman. And yet, one could say that she is far from being a symbol of female empowerment. Rather than challenging patriarchal structures, she fits into them while power positions and influence remain difficult if not impossible to reach for most other women, and the austerity policies continued or introduced by Merkel’s government are, to a great extent, placed on the shoulders of women, thus counteracting progress in the field of gender equality.

European austerity

The European Women’s Lobby (EWL) warned in a 2012 report that European austerity policies are an infringement on women’s rights and gender equality since they lead to a perpetuation of existing and a creation of new inequalities . In 2017, the then shadow equalities minister Sarah Champion (Labour) presented number showing that, since 2010, 86% of the burden of austerity policies had been placed on women’s shoulders. And while Theresa May claimed the Conservative party to be a stronger advocate for gender equality having produced the country’s only two female prime ministers, Mary-Ann Stephenson (co-director of the Women’s Budget Group) pointed out: “The chancellor’s [Philip Hammond] decision to continue with the decisions of his predecessor to cut social security for these low income families, at the same time as cutting taxes, is effectively a transfer from the purses of poorer women into the wallets of richer men.”

In Germany, austerity measures that prevailed in Europe after the 2008 financial crisis had already been implemented as of 2002. The neo-liberal reforms of the Agenda 2010, introduced by the Social Democrat/ Green party government preceding Merkel’s successive Christian Democrat-led governments that continued these austerity policies, increased the German economy’s resilience and competitiveness allowing Germany to recover quickly from the 2008 crisis. Yet, Oxfam highlights that at this policy approach shifted “the balance of power between capital and labour considerably in favour of capital.” It is a shift that comes at a high social cost, particularly for women and especially for those belonging to minority or marginalised groups.

Economy and human rights

Be it employment, the care and health system or general women’s rights, women are particularly affected by austerity measures. Not only are men’s jobs usually prioritised over women’s employment, but cuts in public sector job lead to women being more affected than men as women constituted by far more than half of public sector employees. Women are thus increasingly pushed into precarious employment situations with very low wages and little or no social security or protection of workers’ rights.

At the same time, women are forced to fill the gaps created by the state in the care and health system by cuts to public spending. As state funded care work decreases, especially in an aging society, care is reprivatized, and traditional gender roles are reinforced. Once occupied with unpaid care work, these women have less time for paid employment, free time activities and political engagement. On top, women’s voices are further marginalised by destroying gender equality institutions in stride with austerity measures that pose a struggle to organisations ranging from advocacy groups to service providers such as organisations supporting survivors of violence.

Yet, while austerity policies are a stumbling block in the way of the advancement of women’s rights and gender equality, as well as creating general economic imbalances within the Eurozone, among others the German government under Merkel’s lead holds on to their aim of a balanced budget. The social consequences of this goal will continue to be a burden that is dumped on women, especially single mothers, young women, women with disabilities, older women, migrant and refugee women, LGBTQI+ women, women belonging to ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, women in rural areas and those who live in poverty or extreme poverty.

“Discriminatory economic policies cannot be justified on the basis of the need to achieve macro-economic target and without regard to the human rights of women and gender equality”, Juan Pablo Boholavsky, and independent expert on foreign debt and human rights, argued in a report to the UN General Assembly. In a 2018 report, the OHCHR recommends a series of measures to improve gender equality. Among others the report called on governments to recognise unpaid care and domestic work as valuable work, invest in public services such as care services to redistribute care and domestic work “not just from women to men but from individuals to families to state-funded provisions”, and to strengthen women’s working rights and social security through targeted policies.

To be continued…

While the number of female leaders is growing, austerity policies – particularly when implemented by one of these female leaders such as German chancellor Merkel – highlight feminist, journalist and author Susan Faludi’s statement: “You can’t change the world for women by simply inserting female faces at the top of an unchanged system of social and economic power.” This is not to say, that no progress is being made – in Germany where reforms were undertaken introducing i.e. paid parental leave for fathers as well as mothers, or elsewhere. However, the gender pay gap, female under-representation in positions in politics as well as in business and austerity policies standing in the way of gender equality continue to be a considerable social issue.

by Merle Emrich

Photo Credits

Hands Fingers, Karl-Heinz Gutmann

Austerity isn’t working, wandererwandering, CC BY 2.0

Stew and Sympathy, Neil Moralee, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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Language Revolution: Controversies of Gender-Sensitivity in the German Language

EditorChief — Sat, 18 May 2019 10:21:30 +0000

Different people live in different realities. We all make diverse experiences, and we value and feel about them in unique ways. Therefore, it is not surprising that we do not all use the same language, and that we do not all use language in the same way. This phenomenon becomes evident in Germany’s ongoing debate on gender-sensitive language, with many young feminists using it as a lever to change the way we perceive and design gender relations in society. Their activism is, however, strongly opposed by linguists, writers; many of who are women and outraged about the unnatural, ineffective and, allegedly, unnecessary nature of the language revolution.

Germany’s Language Revolution

To date, the German language offers a variety of expressions specifically describing a group of students of mixed gender: ‘Studierende’, ‘Student*innen’, ‘Student_innen’, ‘StudentInnen’, ‘Studenten/innen’, or even ‘Studentinnen und Studenten’. These terms have been introduced as more gender-sensitive alternatives to the masculine generic ‘Student’. The demonstrated logic applies to all designations that describe groups consisting of men, women and non-binary people. Especially the ‘gendering’ of job titles has gained increased acceptance and application in the 21st century.

Earlier this year, the German city of Hanover formally introduced the implementation of gender-neutral language in all official communication, including emails, letters, press statements, and brochures. The case of Hanover, and other cities that followed, sparked great controversy between proponents and opponents of expressing gender justice within language.

On the one hand, there are those people whose assertive usage of gender-neutral language in daily conversations is a proof of a deeply gender-sensitive way of thinking and perceiving the world. On the other hand, there are people who argue that making language more gender-just is an unnatural process, the “rape of the German language”, and that formalising gender-sensitive language is ineffective in combating inequality. The controversy has built up to a point where pragmatic arguments have been replaced by emotionally laden judgements from both sides, as is evident in frequently occurring debates on social media.

Controversies: How natural and how effective is gender-sensitive language?

Looking more closely at the criticisms expressed against gender-sensitive language, it is mostly the ‘making’ that is denounced by conservative linguists as “politically motivated adulterations of the German language”. They assert that language is the result of natural mutations, while gender-neutral language represents an unnatural intervention that endangers the whole grammatical system. However, how natural is language at all? It is clearly a product of human interaction, a means of communication, something that evolves with developments in society. As much as we are determined by the rules we give ourselves, we are the ones determining those rules. Our revolution creates the evolution of our language.

Perhaps, the critique of unnaturalness is much rather a cry to protect their comfort zone, and their perceived security. Of course, this security is limited to those who benefit from patriarchal structures, and who therefore see a language revolution as unnecessary. It would endanger the secured position they have in the structure, which creates discomfort in them. Besides those who directly benefit in a patriarchal society, there is a large group of people who simply conform to the dominant paradigm because protesting is exhausting and it cannot promise a more secure and fair structure as an outcome.

Once we have gotten used to gender inequality in all areas of our social life, then we are also used to a language that reproduces inequality. Maybe the generic masculine isn’t that much of a problem after all? On social media, there are many feminine voices asserting that they do not care what they are being called, as long as they know that they are meant to be addressed and included. They do not believe that language shapes our perception, therefore, it does not matter how we term things and people. One famous argument is that since Angela Merkel could make it despite her job title being announced as ‘Kanzler’, not ‘Kanzlerin’, our language does not cause any problems of inequality.

How does language shape our perception of reality?

Language is a huge part of human life. We use it to communicate all kinds of messages about the world around us, and we make sense of this reality through language. Of course, as argued by many opponents of gender-sensitive language, a word in isolation does not carry meaning and cannot make a change. However, considered in a certain context, words obtain meaning, as they are spoken by one person to another person through language in order to send a certain message. Therefore, the way in which we use the language matters in that it changes our mindset through a certain meaning we create out of it. The newly developing mindset will make us perceive a new kind of reality with new opportunities and limitations.

If my reality is that ‘Krankenschwestern’ and ‘Putzfrauen’ (literally: ‘Sick peoples’ sisters’ and ‘Cleaning women’, translated as nurses and cleaners) are supposed to be women as they are specifically addressed in the job title, I will be more likely to identify with these professions. And if I, as a young woman, am verbally encouraged to consider a career as a ‘Bundeskanzler*in’ (chancellor) or ‘Geschäftsführer*in’ (manager), this opportunity will sound a lot more realistic to me. Instead of being determined by the limitations of my language, I get to make a choice between cleaning and making politics.

The question remains: If we can use language positively by directly encouraging young females that they are considered in and cared about by society, and that they clearly have a space in various male-dominated spaces, why would we refuse to do so?

How can we move forward towards a more gender-just society?

We all have our opinions on questions of gender justice, which is hardly surprising, as our experiences and social realities are unique. All in all, it cannot be predicted that a change in language will generate more just structures, because we cannot fully grasp the causal relations between language and social change. This leads us to the debate on what has to change first – our language, or our social structure? At this point, we are facing a typical chicken-and-egg-problem. And we are stuck, because all of our attention and efforts to make positive change towards a more gender-just society are absorbed by this one fundamental debate.

The way to go might be simpler than we expect. Basically, we need to decide how much energy we put into discussing and disagreeing on the ‘how’ of achieving gender justice, and how much energy we can use to make positive change. Surely, we should not completely skip debating, because it can be fruitful and help us understand our pluralist society. But once the conversation thwarts and paralyses us, it is time to move on. What is in our might to create positive change? What kind of reality do we live in? Are women and LGBTQ+ people represented in the language that constitutes our reality? If they aren’t, the most fundamental step will be making them visible by verbally highlighting and celebrating their spaces and achievements in our society.

The spark of a revolution lies in the dissatisfaction and disagreement on some perceived social injustice of a group of people. Once these negative emotions and attitudes can be translated in a positive manner, as in a certain systematic change that is aspired, the revolution evolves. This is because ideas are powerful, and once a change can be imagined, we already live, to an extent, in a changed reality. We are starting to perceive situations differently as we direct our attention to certain variables and reflect critically upon them, and so our reality is different from the one we used to live in before. As it relates to language, it evolves as we adjust it to our reality, knowingly or unknowingly. That means, if our mindset is revolutionist as it perceives structural inequality, we will naturally make efforts to generate more equality through the way we express ourselves in language.

by Ellen Wagner

Photo Credits

Politics 11, Erik, CC BY-SA 2.0

Speech Balloon, Marc Walthieu, CC BY-NC 2.0

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