Reply #45: Actually, studies show that not to be true. [View All]

[noamnety]

In career counseling studies, they found that the language DOES make a difference to children, when asked which careers they'd like to have when they grow up.

If you give them a multiple choice survey with options like chairman on it, the girls will avoid that option.
If you give the same multiple choice survey with options like chairperson, the results become gender neutral.

The vision that kids conjure up when they read "chairman" is NOT gender neutral - they conjure up a vision of a man, and make that mental connection that this is not a job for people like me. It affects gender stereotyping from a young age, which is the main reason I think it's important.

This is why the APA manual (from the American Psychological Association) specifies gender neutral language - because they have studied the effects of language and determined that it DOES make a real difference: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/608/05/