Are you a “he/she” or a “they” kind of person? Does it irritate you when people go out of their way to speak or write inclusively? Inclusive language is a topic of heated debate. And a good thing too: language is something that’s alive and evolving.

Language forms and influences us down to our very deepest ideas and beliefs. When asked to draw a “teacher” or “pupil”, children often depict predominantly male figures. See for yourself in the video from journalist Eva Schulz (in German). In German the consequences are even more far-reaching: if the feminine form of the noun is left out for male-dominated roles such as engineers and electricians, fewer girls realise that these trades and professions might also be something for them.

The male prototype
For the longest time the German (and French) language used the masculine generic form – for example “Kunde” (female form “Kundin”), “Mitarbeiter” (“Mitarbeiterin”) and “Client” (as opposed to “Cliente”) – to also include females. Writers assumed that masculine terms would be interpreted to mean both sexes. But in reality that rarely happens. Numerous studies in various languages have repeatedly shown that the generic male form is not interpreted generically, but predominantly as male – not just by children, but by adults as well. The result is that women are less likely to respond to job ads written in the masculine form, and the results of surveys are distorted because the use of the masculine influences the responses of females. Language has a direct influence on companies and businesses.

At the beginning of 2021, the definitive reference Duden abolished the generic male form in German. The male form no longer applies to both genders. A “Politiker” (“politician”) is now a “male person who holds political office”.

Diversity of inclusive language
But what options are there for making language inclusive? The German language is a really interesting case in point, so let’s look at the pros and cons of the various options.

• Combining the masculine and feminine forms with a small or capital I: Leser/innen or LeserInnen
  The addition of the capital I, which emerged in the 1980s to compensate for male-dominated language, has been the subject of great controversy. The criticism often raised is that women are added as a mere suffix.

• Both masculine and feminine forms in full: Leserinnen und Leser
  Like the capital I, this option includes only people who identify on a binary gender basis (woman/man). This construction, in combination with pronouns, can lead to long, complicated sentences that destroy the flow (“die aufmerksame Leserin und der aufmerksame Leser”).

• Participial constructions: Lesende
  Strictly speaking this usage isn’t correct, as readers are only “Lesende” if they’re actually in the process of reading. In texts with a lot of references to people it can also come over as very generic. On the positive side, this option includes all other gender identities as well as the binary sexes male and female.

• Asterix, colon and underscore: Leser*innen, Leser:innen, Leser_innen
  Similar to the participial constructions, the gender symbol includes all gender identities in addition to man and woman. This makes not only women visible, but the whole diversity that exists in society.

• Gender-free forms
  Gender-free language favours neutral forms and gives no hint of gender. Here the question is whether society wants to completely rid language of gender identities or whether it would rather take language as an opportunity for making room for them.

It’s about discussion, not perfection
If you’re now asking where you should start and which form to choose, I’d like to remind you of one thing: inclusive language is a process where the way is the goal. Language is alive, and we should be talking about it. The key question when it comes to inclusive language has less to do with perfection or the symbol than with awareness of the influence of language.

If you’re now asking whether it’s your job to change social awareness, I would say no, not really. But your language and the way you communicate is an opportunity to stand up for your values and consciously include people rather than just “mentioning them in passing”. So it would be a shame if we were to miss the chance to use language to mirror the diversity that prevails in reality. This way we’re more likely to encounter engineers of different genders when Ingenieur*innen are called for – in children’s drawings as well as in the workplace.