This article is written by Peter Yeung.

What’s in a word? According to researchers that analysed Sweden’s official introduction of the gender-neutral pronoun ‘hen’ – an alternative to “han” (he) and “hon” (she) – a word, or lack thereof, can lead to multiple forms of gender bias in society that are, without fail, in favour of heterosexual men.

In 2015, the new pronoun, which is used to refer to a person without revealing their gender because it is either unknown, deemed superfluous or the subject is transgender, was added to the Swedish Academy’s ordbok, a comprehensive historical dictionary updated once a decade.

The term ‘hen’ was first coined in the 1960s by feminists groups when the ubiquitous use of “han” (he) became politically incorrect. But the landmark decision triggered a feverish debate in the Swedish press, with controversy raging over the potential implications for children’s identity. The Swedish Language Council, the authority on Swedish language, first ruled against the use of ‘hen’ and then changed its mind.

A lot of the weirdness was rubbed off because it had already been familiar for years.

Over time, that outrage has calmed to a whisper, and recent evidence shows ‘hen’ has changed how Swedish people think. It is now commonplace and can be read in newspapers, official texts, court rulings and literature.

“When introducing a new word, built into it is a sense of weirdness because they’ve never heard of the word before,” said Efrén O. Pérez, a professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles. “But a lot of the weirdness was rubbed off because it had already been familiar for years.”

Research published last year by Pérez on a sample of more than 3,000 people, all native speakers of Swedish, involving showing them an androgynous cartoon human walking a dog. A third were asked to describe the picture using only neutral pronouns, a third using only female pronouns and a third only male pronouns. Volunteers were then asked to complete a short story about an anonymous person running for political office and then answer a questionnaire on women and LGBT people.

Using a gender-neutral pronoun, the research found, reduces mental biases that favour men and boosts positive feelings towards women and LGBT people. The tests reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences said “individual use of gender-neutral pronouns reduces the mental salience of males” and that “this shift is associated with people expressing less bias in favour of traditional gender roles.”

“It made a reliable and meaningful difference,” explained Pérez. “Those asked to use the genderless language were 10-20 percentage more egalitarian. The word ‘hen’ makes wider room for non-male categories such as female and non-binary and that matters when it comes to gender equality and non-traditional gender groups.”

However, evidence suggests that cultural context and previous associations with a particular word can affect its impact as a gender-neutral pronoun – as can the relevant language spoken. More than 100 attempts to adopt a gender-neutral pronoun in English such as ‘thon’ have failed over the course of the past century and a half.

A separate study in 2018 that combined both English and Swedish words and speakers, concluded that 68% of English-speaking respondents associated “they” – one of the gender-neutral pronouns in English – with the masculine gender, compared to a 50-50 split with the neologism ‘ze’ or ‘hen’ and a similar level with the paired form of a pronoun “he/she”.

If you want to see better gender relations, political leaders and policymakers must act.

“Hen could influence how we perceive gender and reduce gender stereotypes,” said Marie Gustafsson Sendén, a psychologist at Stockholm University and co-author of the study. “It could be more gender-inclusive and produce less male bias.”

Sendén argued that new words or old words with new uses can undermine the binary nature of many languages, nudging people away from both the idea that masculine is the default and that identity must fit in the masculine/feminine split.

A repeat of the study due to be published later this year further reinforces that evidence. “Younger people especially are super positive, they really use the pronoun ‘hen’, and they don’t think about it so much,” said Sendén of the results. “It’s not political or ideological to them.”

If new language can become a useful tool for establishing gender-equality, challenging gender perceptions or perhaps even erasing traditional gender roles, the belief among researchers is that the main obstacle when it comes to introducing the terminology is simply political will.

“A lot of what individuals think is not through direct experience but mediated by what their leaders say,” added Professor Pérez. “It has everything to do with what political elites do. Therefore, if you want to see better gender relations, political leaders and policymakers must act. Populations will follow – just look at how the whole world has come to wear masks because of coronavirus.”

👋 You can write an article like this one! Share your thoughts with a community of public servants. Learn more

(Image Credit: Unsplash)