Is Spanish Sexist?

Nobody cops to “political correctness” anymore; policing language is what the other guy does. The rest of us are just, you know, telling it like it is. But playing PC-policeman officer is a relatively peaceful and noninvasive way to nudge the culture in a particular direction, a form of persuasion in a democracy built on consensus. And according to the authors of a little study in the November issue of the Journal Sex Roles, switching from one form of speaking to another might shift your inner liberal just as quickly.

The study authors wanted to see whether languages that assign gender to nouns, like Spanish and French, might implicitly encourage “opposition or hostility to extending equal opportunity to women, especially in terms of work-related issues.” They gave a passage and a questionnaire to randomly assigned high-school students in high-level Spanish and French classes; some got the English version, some got the French or Spanish version. They also randomly assigned questionnaires to bilingual students, again distributing English to some and Spanish to others. They report that students who happened to receive the questionnaires printed in English were significantly less likely to express “sexist attitudes.”

I've no idea whether the finding is valid, but it manages to sound both obvious and absurd. Spanish is sexist? On the other hand, it would seem odd if the practice of assigning gender to every known object, in the context of nearly every expressed thought, failed to reverberate in some dark mindspace.

Tags: sexism

Kerry Howley is a contributing editor at Reason Magazine and an Arts Fellow at the University of Iowa's literary nonfiction program.

Comments

Grammatical Gender

By: Tailspin | Wed, 11/11/2009 - 00:17

If the investigator wants to compare whether masculine/feminine gender influences/not influences attitudes toward women, try comparing Spanish or French speakers with those of a language that does not have 'sexual' genders. Like Swahili.

along the same lines

By: acl | Tue, 11/10/2009 - 22:38

http://www.newsweek.com/id/205985

Keep in mind these are high

By: Flaneuse | Tue, 11/10/2009 - 22:02

Keep in mind these are high school foreign language students in the very beginning stages of acquisition. Are the languages more sexist, or is the problem that the student's simplified thoughts, when expressed in a language in which he or she has less fluency, reveal our own bias?

Grammatical gender is not the same thing as biological gender, and if you note the awkwardness with my "he or she" nonsense above, English isn't always gender-neutral either.

Though the previous poster's comment is well taken and something I've always noticed.

P.S. I teach Spanish myself.

Reminds me of a Spanish joke email I got once

By: tacotruck | Tue, 11/10/2009 - 17:42

* Perro: Mejor amigo del Hombre.
* Perra: Puta.

* Aventurero: Osado, valiente, arriesgado.
* Aventurera: Puta

* Zorro: Espadachín justiciero.
* Zorra: Puta

* Ambicioso: Visionario, enérgico, con metas.
* Ambiciosa: Interesada, puta.

* Cualquier: Fulano, Mengano, Zultano.
* Cualquiera: Puta

* Regalado: Participio del verbo ragalar.
* Regalada: Puta.

* Callejero: De la calle, urbano.
* Callejera: puta.

* Hombrezuelo: Hombrecillo, mínimo , pequeño.
* Mujerzuela: puta.

* Hombre de la vida: Hombre de gran experiencia.
* Mujer de la vida: Puta.

* Atorrante: Adj. que indica simpatía y viveza, un perfecto"banana" (Argentina)
* Atorranta: Puta.

* Rápido: Inteligente, despierto.
* Rápida: Puta.