She or he

Picture a room full of female and male executives at a business conference. There are six speakers on the stage. Each is about to talk about her or his successes to the assembled crowd of top business women and men. Are you able to visualise the scene? Or do you feel slightly uneasy because the previous two sentences didn’t flow in quite the same way as they normally would?

How we use phrases containing words relating to men and women (and doesn’t that sound so much more, well, normal?) is the subject of intriguing research by Dr Selin Kesebir. She has carried out seven interlinked studies into how people use phrases that join two gendered words such as “his and her”.

“In general, people are not very conscious of the language they’re using,” says Dr Kesebir. “But a body of evidence suggests that how people use gendered words, including personal pronouns, not only expresses their beliefs around gender but also shapes the ways they see the social world and their place in it as a woman or a man.” When people hear these word order choices, they read them as cues indicating the relevance of the people described by them. Word order can both convey and reinforce gender beliefs.

Why does this matter? Because language has the power to alter people’s viewpoints – if we choose our words with care. “By ordering words one way rather than the other, we conjure up a particular mental model in the minds of our audiences – either reinforcing an existing stereotype or slightly puncturing it,” says Dr Kesebir.