Overview:

Just as good journalists examine their words for correct spelling, punctuation, grammar, usage, and style, so too will they want to check for sexist language that could unfairly represent their subjects.

In a dictionary‐thesaurus format, Unspinning the Spin: The Women’s Media Center Guide to Accurate, Bias‐Free Language provides background information on each sexist and other biased term along with alternatives that allow you to choose the best word or phrase for your purposes‐‐words that are accurate, succinct, and inclusive.

The Women's Media Center has already begun highlighting words from the guide on our site. The full guide, written by Rosalie Maggio and edited by WMC Founders Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem, is set to be released in 2009. For more information on the Guide, to ask question, or to make suggestions, please email us by clicking here.

Unspinning the Spin distinguishes among gender‐free, gender‐fair, and gender‐specific words:

• Gender‐free terms don't indicate sex and can be used for either women/girls or men/boys (teacher, bureaucrat, employee, hiker, operations manager, child, clerk, sales rep, hospital patient, student, grandparent, chief executive officer). One problem with gender‐free terms is that they sometimes obscure reality. Battered spouse implies that men and women are equally battered; this is far from true.
• Gender‐fair language involves the symmetrical use of gender‐specific words (Ms. Cortright/Mr. Lopez instead of Judy Cortright/Mr. Lopez; councilwoman/councilman instead of councilperson/councilman; young man/young woman instead of young man/young girl).
• Gender‐specific words (businessman, altar girl) are neither good nor bad in themselves, but they sometimes identify and even emphasize a person's sex when it is not necessary (and is sometimes even objectionable) to do so.

Three entries from Unspinning the Spin: The Women’s Media Center Guide to Accurate, Bias‐Free Language:

lady (noun) woman. Many good people have trouble understanding the objections to "lady." "But isn't that a nice word?" they ask. "The concept of 'lady' goes far beyond a single word to a whole way of life" (Alette Olin Hill, Mother Tongue, Father Time). "Lady" defines women as ornaments or decorations rather than real people, as arbiters of both manners and morals, as members of a leisured class, as beings removed from any hint of sexuality, as needing protection from real life, as "too good" or "too special" to "dirty their hands"; it is classist, condescending, trivializing, and anachronistic. There are three times when the use of "lady" is unobjectionable: when referring to a female member of the House of Lords; when you want to convey a sense of breeding, delicacy, or graciousness ("she's a real lady"); when it is paired with "gentleman" ("Welcome, ladies and gentlemen").

chairman (noun) chair, moderator, committee/department head, presiding officer, presider, president, chairer, convener, coordinator, group coordinator, leader, discussion/group/committee leader, head, speaker, organizer, facilitator, officiator, director, supervisor, manager, overseer, administrator, monitor, clerk. Some people use “chairwoman” and “chairman,” but it is generally better to keep this term gender‐free because “chairwoman” is perceived as a less weighty word; “chairperson” is an awkward and self‐conscious term used mostly for women. There is much linguistic support for the short, simple “chair”: it was, in fact, the original term (1647), with “chairman” coming into the language in 1654 and “chairwoman” in 1685. Using “chair” as both noun and verb nicely parallels the use of “head” for both noun and verb. See also chairman (verb), chairmanship.

he (pseudogeneric) never use “he” when you mean “he and she,” or when you are referring to someone who could be a man or a woman (for example, “the consumer/he”). The use of he to mean he and she is ambiguous, the grammatical justification for its use is problematic, and it is not perceived as including both women and men. A number of careful studies, beginning with Wendy Martyna’s in 1978 (“What Does ‘He’ Mean?” Journal of Communication), have shown that women, men, and children alike picture only males when he is used to mean everybody. “It is clear that, in spite of the best efforts of prescriptive grammarians, he has not come to be either used or understood in the generic sense under most circumstances” (Philip M. Smith, Language, the Sexes and Society). [Some 15 ways of replacing he with inclusive language are detailed in the guide.]