Androcentrism and Genderism in Polish Language

In times when the definition of a woman is no longer constant or abiding, the very foundation of feminist politics is questioned and transformed accordingly. In her book “Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity”, Judith Butler challenges the current understanding of the feminist model by opening the discussion on how it has changed our view of female gender. Butler calls for abandoning the binary categories, stating that gender is nothing more than a performance informed by acts and behaviours and its limiting to its users and language is one, if not most important of factors maintaining these identities. This statement seems to have its roots in the theory of linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The theory holds that speakers of a certain language are affected by its structure in terms of their view of the world. Although the term linguistic relativity was coined back in 1930s, the general idea has been in the discussion since 19th century. Currently, most linguists agree that language influences certain kinds of cognitive processes.

Assuming that transforming the language would have an effect on its users and that the society should aim for reducing gender discrimination and stereotyping, introducing a gender-fair language is one of the major steps towards doing so. Most languages show substantial differences and asymmetries when it comes to the image of gender (although there are examples of gender-less languages such as Finnish or Turkish). Some, however, may be more conspicuous than others. In languages such as English, which, except for pronouns is mostly gender-neutral, it is fairly easy to neutralise them entirely – an example of that would be replacing a gender indicating word “Policeman” with a gender- neutral “Police officer”.

Another category are languages that are gendered structurally and grammatically. Gender in these languages is expressed through nouns, adjectives and sometimes even verbs which makes it much more difficult to neutralise them. What is also prevalent, is the use of masculine generics when referring to mixed- gender groups of people (whereas feminine forms refer to women only). In such cases, a preferred strategy would be to femininize these languages, that is to introduce a more frequent use of feminine forms in order to combat, what Luce Irigaray, a French feminist, linguist and a philosopher calls a “linguistic absence”.

These strategies have been implemented in a few communities, most notably in German-speaking countries, where the use of gender-fair language has been officially regulated and in use for a longer time and since showed positive effects on the German society. In Poland, however, all previous attempts of introducing gender-fair language have been met with criticism from both the society and majority of linguists as well. In October of 2017, a coalition of gender equality Karat sent letters to both Minister of Education and Minister of Family, Employment and Social Politics appealing for much needed changes in the official documents classifying occupations for the purpose of labour market. As of now, there are no regulations for using feminine job titles alongside with the generic masculine forms in Polish language, which reinforces the stereotypes of certain occupation being “masculine” and “for men” and data collected by Karat confirms women are less likely to apply for these positions if the employer uses the masculine form only. There is also an existing inconsistency with creating new titles for men within traditionally “feminine” occupations, while it is unusual to create titles for women within traditionally “masculine” occupations. Both Ministers rejected Karat’s proposition. Why the attempts of using gender-fair language cause negative reaction from the Polish society while there have been successful examples of its use in other countries, such as Germany and Austria?

Polish feminists have been trying to introduce feminine job titles unsuccessfully for years now, and every time they do it causes a major discussion in Polish media but ultimately it never leads to anything. In 2012, Joanna Mucha (a liberal politician, economist, a member of the Polish parliament and a Minister of Sport at the time) initiated a national discourse after she asked to be addressed by the word “Ministra” (pol. female equivalent of generic masculine “minister”, not commonly in use) in a political interview. Many articles have been written on the topic, majority of them criticising and even mocking the politician. Response from the general Polish population seemed to be negative as well with many comments under these articles pointing to how “funny” or “unprofessional” the word sounds. The negative reaction came mostly from the more conservative, arguing the word (or feminine job titles in general) does not work well with a tradition of Polish language. This notion comes from the times when Poland was under the influence of the Soviet Union (The Polish People’s Republic, from 1947 until 1989), when the unitary Marxist-Leninist communist government started advising against already existing feminine job titles (which became linguistically acceptable with the emancipation of women in Poland in the beginning of 20th century; these were mainly academic titles since women were for the first time accepted in universities). Masculinisation, how the propaganda proclaimed, was to be a symbol of progress while the “old feminine endings” were a stigma of inferiority. Since not that many years have passed since Poland re-established itself as a presidential democratic republic in 1989, some of the ideas propagated by the communist government still exist in the collective unconscious of many from the older generations. This causes a problem for younger women, who in return refuse to use feminine professional titles in fear of being taken less seriously by the older generations, and thus being less successful in their professions.

Another obstacle in introducing feminine job titles is the structure of the Polish language itself. An example of that would be the word “magister” (pol. master, masculine, an academic title given to a graduate of a master’s degree). To create a feminine version of this word, we need to add a suffix -ka, which creates “magisterka”. Normally that would not be a problem but the word “magisterka” already exists in the common Polish language, meaning the master’s degree in general or the written component of the course, the dissertation. The same situation is with the word “drukarz” (pol. printer, masculine, as in a job title for a man who creates prints for his job) and “drukarka” (pol. printer, as in the printing device). There is also the problem of many feminine versions of a job title meaning “the wife of” instead of a female holding a certain job. That is the case with the word “sędzia” (pol. judge, masculine) and a feminine version of it, sędzina” (pol. the wife of a judge). Historically, Polish women were often defined by the profession of their husbands, since traditionally the role of a woman was to stay home and take care of the children. Lastly, there are many job titles that do not have a feminine equivalent in general, mainly because these would be the traditionally “masculine” occupations, like for example “hydraulik” (pol. plumber, masculine) and it is really difficult to create a feminine version of them. This goes for all traditionally masculine professions in categories such as military and church titles and positions and occupations within the heavy industry.

It is important to notice that there is an observable tendency in Polish language to use masculine forms when referring to women and adding a word “Pani” (pol. Miss/Ms) before the title, like for a word “dyrektor”, which by itself means director or principal (masculine). To indicate the gender is female, we would say “Pani dyrektor”, even though it seems like it would be easy to add the suffix -ka and say “dyrektorka”. On the other hand, when men start to carry out traditionally feminine professions, there is a completely different tendency to create separate masculine titles. An example of this is the word nursery teacher, which in Polish is “przedszkolanka” (feminine). Even though there is no easy way to create a masculine form of the word, a completely new one was introduced – “wychowawca przedszkolny” (“wychowawca” – pol. tutor or teacher, masculine; “przedszkolny” – pol. pre-school level).

Linguistic absence of women in the Polish language is an established inclination that we can see on daily basis, whether in common sayings, official regulations and laws, questionnaires or even school textbooks. According to statistics conducted by Marek Łazinski in 2003, there is a proven disproportion in quantity between masculine and feminine forms of verbs – with masculine forms being used two to four times more often on average. This comes from the fact that masculine forms are often used as generics, even though there are alternative terms in existence. All of these examples prove that Polish language is characterised by a high degree of androcentrism. However, changing it is not as easy as it seems to be. Studying gender asymmetries in language can be done from many perspectives: linguistics, social or psycholinguistics, psychological and many more which causes an ongoing debate between the scholars. The issue of androcentrism in language has been discussed many times in Western countries and there seems to be a general awareness of the way language can reflect social attitudes towards women. There are many texts devoted to the issue as well. In Poland, on the other hand, the topic is still fairly new and definitely not as widely talked about as in the Western society.

According to the theory of linguistic relativity that I have talked about in the beginning, language reflects the society as much as society reflects its language. In places like United Kingdom or the USA, using gender-fair language is regulated by the law. Many institutions teach their employees how to eliminate androcentric elements from official documents. Using words such as “they” instead of “he” or “she” became a new norm even though it might have sounded strange to the previous generations. Changes like that have been observed in German-speaking countries as well, where the priority is to increase the linguistic visibility of women. Similar changes are occurring in France, where many feminine nouns have been introduced to the existing masculine titles of professions. In all of these countries, changes were inevitable yet difficult at the beginning. There are also many opponents to these changes, arguing implementing them is a way of censoring the language or that the introduced words sound ridiculous or funny.

This is also the case in Polish, where the topic of feminist linguistics seems to be almost completely overlooked. It is often considered marginal and not important enough to write about. A large majority of Polish linguists are resistant to making any modifications, which is a tendency to preserve traditions and conservatism not only in language but also in other spheres, political or cultural. But it does not mean that this will always be the case – we cannot forget the fact that there are few important changes already happening. We are slowly limiting the use of “panna” (pol. Miss) versus “pani” (pol. Ms) in official documents and we have already stopped using traditional female surnames indicating their affiliation to their fathers or husbands. There are more and more feminine profession titles. However even these small changes, how Małgorzata Karwatowska and Jolanta Szpyra-Kozłowska note in their book “Lingwistyka płci: Ona i on w języku polskim” (eng. “Linguistics of Gender: She and He in Polish language”, will not be implemented on a large scale if we do not start a national discourse about androcentrism in our language and this issue becomes a part of the society’s collective consciousness.