Before we progress forward the discussion about content delivering in a balanced form, let’s talk about ‘Gender Neutrality’. A lot has already been discussed about gender neutralism and there exists nothing more to add. It started as a movement that caught up momentum due to the sole cause of gender equality in social roles.
What is Gender Neutrality? Why is it important? How would it affect the society? Too many questions that are still left unanswered. To start with, Gender Neutrality is an idea that policies, language, and other social institutions (social structures, gender roles, or gender identity) should avoid distinguishing roles according to people's sex or gender, in order to avoid discrimination arising from the impression that there are social roles for which one gender is more suited than another. It must not be confused with grammatical gender.
In R.W Connell’s Gender Order Theory, we get to realise that primitive nature of the society was to segregate social roles based on gender. Since the nature of the society was mostly masculine, job roles are referred to as male-dominated. However, now the norms of the society and culture have changed drastically. We live in a balanced society. Prevalence of equality, equal rights, equal respect for all.
Gender Neutral Terms
For instance, you are bestowed upon a title of performing heroic tasks. So you are termed as Hero right? Irrespective of your gender. The term heroine is now obsolete. Some examples of gender neutral terms such as Chairperson, Homemaker, Flight attendant, Police Officer, Actor are all derived recently after the Gender Neutrality Movement. These job roles are eliminated from its previous stereotypical form of sticking to masculine and feminine association.
How Content is helping promote Gender Neutrality?
It is important for any society to adapt to the surroundings to change with time. It’s a new beginning for the next generation, to not get entitled to gender specific norms. Content is playing a major role in creating a whole new space for Gender Neutral Term adaptation. Whether through marketing, literature, business or education. Content is trying to promote equality with its mighty pen. Literature has always been in favour of dusting off this biased phenomenon. Writers have always mentioned their surname instead of their name to create a sense of mystery around their name and also to eliminate the prejudice against female writers. We often come across people calling William Shakespeare as Shakespeare or Jane Austen as Austen. Similarly, Miss or Mrs. are generally used to address a female that is meant to be defined as per their relationship with a man, which is absolutely archaic in contrast to Mr. Recently, Ms. is widely used due to its preference of not darting on a females’ marital status. Even The Chicago Manual of Style has been trying since long to put up with gender inclusive writing. The book advices to avoid using titles in the cover pages of books like Mr.,Ms.,Dr., or Prof. Any book should label its writers’ full name instead of associating recognitions.
Content Marketing such as advertisement videos, blogs, social media posts are concentrating on bringing in gender neutrality. A blog or an article addressing individuals as people or beings is a good way to avoid the gender drive or referring to ladies and gentlemen. Similarly, in business, a boss or a manager are gender neutral terms.
We need more gender inclusive content to make the society more comfortable with appropriate terms that justifies the job role of all in one. Thus, The Pendits emphasises the concept of gender neutrality in content and tries to integrate each content with terms that follow the policies and fundamentals of this movement. #LetsMakeThingsWrite