lar language in contracts and other legal documents helped reinforce this in all English-speaking countries, it was often ignored. Studies indicate that most people understand he to refer to men only. Sentences like A doctor is a busy person; he must be able to balance a million obligations at once. imply that all doctors are men. (Jacobson, 1995) Males are clearly more visible than females in language content and use. For example, computer analysis of 100,000 words from childrens schoolbooks found male pronouns to outnumber female ones by almost four to one. This ratio was not primarily due to the use of masculine words in generic context; 97 percent of the use of he referred to male humans or animals, or to persons presumed male (sailor, farmer); and men were referred to specifically seven times as often as women (Henley, 1980)There are several solutions to the pronoun problem. The first one is to use the word they as a singular. Most people when speaking or writing informal relies on singular they. For instance, I should like to praise everyone, even if they did it incorrectly. Some people are annoyed by the incorrect grammar that this solution necessitates, but it is used the most frequently. The second solution is to create new pronouns. Many observers have proposed the introduction of new pronoun forms that do not convey a label of gender, like gen for man (in its generic sense) or tey for either he or she where the sex difference is not important. (Heatherington, 1980 p. 180) An example would be the politician tey instead of the politician he instead of the awkward phrase the politician he or she. The third solution is to make the subject and verb plural. The generic use of male pronouns, he, his, him, is misleading and exclusive. Simply stating that male pronouns should be understood to include females does not suffice. Male pronouns should be used only in relation to males. When referring to humans in general,...
