This meaning of gender to mean gender role or sex should not be confused with the grammatical gender of other languages such as French and Spanish, which assign gender to nouns such as la maison or le crayon. Other languages have genders that are not analogous to sex, such as "animate" and "inanimate" in Ojibway. (see grammatical gender).
They decline as follows:
| Subject | Object | Possessive Adjective | Possessive Pronoun | Reflexive | |
| Male | He laughed | I hit him | His face bled | I am his | He shaves himself |
| Female | She laughed | I hit her | Her face bled | I am hers | She shaves herself |
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2 Generic Usage |
Traditionally ships have been referred to using the feminine pronouns (even ships named after men, such as the USS Abraham Lincoln), as well as countries and oceans. The origins of this practice are not certain, and it is currently in decline (though more common for ships, particularly in nautical usage, than for countries).
In March 2002, the British newspaper Lloyds List announced that it would start referring to all vessels as 'it', but subsequently reversed its decision after receiving letters of protest.
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Usage of him and his to refer to a generic member of a mixed sex group was prescribed by manuals of style and school textbooks from the early 19th century until around the 1960s. It was called 'generic' or 'universal'
Some people feel that this can cause a variety of problems. In particular, many feminists feel that the male pronouns imply a masculine referent, which they argue would tend to exclude women unfairly (see sexism).
Recently, some people also use female pronouns in a generic sense, to draw attention to feminist issues. Some authors recommend alternating between the use of the generic male and the generic female, perhaps on a per-chapter basis.
Some people use compound forms to emphasize the possibility of the referent having either sex: such as he or she, him or her, his or her or himself or herself. Any of these forms could be reversed, so as not to imply that males had priority: she or he, her or him, her or his or herself or himself. There are also abbreviated forms, such as s/he and him/herself, but most language commentators dismiss them as unpronounceable for everyday speech. However, these and neologisms such as "hir", "sie" and their variants are used at times.
It is not unheard of for governments, clubs and other groups to reinterpret sentences like 'every member must take off his shoes before entering the chapel' to mean that therefore female members may not enter the chapel. Indeed, the Persons Case, the legal battle over whether or not Canadian women counted as legal persons eligible to sit in the Senate, partially turned on such a point.
In 1984 the Minnesota State Legislature ordered that all gender-specific language be removed from the state laws. After two years of work, the rewritten laws were adopted. Only 301 of 20,000 pronouns were feminine. "His" was changed 10,000 times and "he" was changed 6,000 times.
By contrast, the Constitution of Ireland, describes the President of Ireland throughout as 'he', yet the two most recent presidents were women; in 1997, four of the five candidates in the election were women. Efforts in a court case to argue that 'he' excluded women were dismissed by the Irish Supreme Court, which ruled the term 'gender-neutral'.
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Ships and Countries
Generic Usage
Gender-specific pronouns are also sometimes used when most members of some group are the same gender, with a small number of members of the opposite gender.
Compare the word man when used refer to humans in general.Generic use and Non-sexist language
Government Usage