Powerful gender-related words can subtly affect our thinking and our behavior. For instance, at one time many young women were discouraged from pursuing careers in medicine or engineering at least partially because speakers commonly referred to hypothetical doctors or engineers as he (and then labeled a woman who worked as a doctor a woman doctor, as if to say, “She’s an exception; doctors are normally men”). Similarly, a label like male nurse may offend by reflecting stereotyped assumptions about proper roles for men. Equally problematic is the traditional use of man and mankind to refer to people of both sexes and the use of he and him to refer generally to any human being. Because such usage ignores half of the people on earth, it hardly helps a writer build common ground.

Sexist language, those words and phrases that stereotype or ignore members of either sex or that unnecessarily call attention to gender, can usually be revised fairly easily. There are several alternatives to using masculine pronouns to refer to persons whose gender is unknown to the writer. One option is to recast the sentence using plural forms.

Another option is to substitute pairs of pronouns such as he or she, him or her, and so on.

Yet another way to revise the sentence is to eliminate the pronouns.

Beyond the pronoun issue, try to eliminate sexist nouns from your writing.