At Merriam-Webster, we have several female editors. Or is it female editor? Are you sure female editorRight?
There is now a distinction between using ‘woman’ and ‘female’ as modifiers, with some people preferring one over the other. If you get stuck, consider that it’s rarely necessary to say something like ‘female surgeon’; most of the time ‘surgeon’ works fine.
Gender modifier like female, womenAnd Lady is a thorny problem in the use of English. All three words begin life as nouns, with women And Lady appeared very early in the language, and female appeared in the 1300s. Lady originally used as a form of address for a woman who runs the household or who is in charge of a servant, and later used to refer to a woman holding a high position. Women retains its original meaning, now almost 1,400 years old: “a mature woman”. Female was first used to refer to a woman or a girl, but for about a hundred years after its appearance, it was also used to refer to animals (“Byrdes that ben femalles may not abyde there,” —Myrrour of the world, 1481). Unlike Lady And womenHowever, female is also a formal adjective, and its historical use is more clinical and biological than none (as in, Alexander Pope’s “female tree” or “female goat”). There is very little fuss about any of these words. Until the late 1800s, that is.
The debate begins with naked nouns: is it appropriate to call a group of women? female? Are all women women? You can call a group of women of various ages female or you should go with Ladies or women? Although advice varied, it was generally agreed in the early 20th century that female is a pejorative term because it does not distinguish between humans and animals (this despite the fact that female in previous centuries, actually preferred women And Lady); Lady is a polite and nice word to describe a woman of high or excellent social status (despite the fact that at the time it was often used in publication and informal speech) to specifically refer to women who happen to have jobs that would benefit from being tagged as on their station, as with she cleanup And saleswoman); And women is the fancy term for a mature woman (always being).
All three nouns were used attributively (i.e. before a noun to modify it) before—womenin fact, has been in use since the 14th century. Newspapers from the 1800s were surprisingly popular. female doctor, female lawyerAnd female scientist. And these uses went largely unnoticed until the 20th century.
The first scholar to critically examine the attribute uses of female, womenAnd Lady was Henry Fowler, the author of the 1926 book Dictionary using modern English, and although his conclusion was reasonable, the way he presented himself pleased him. In a section called “Indicating femininity,” he claims that women argue against the use of gender words ending in -essalike female author And poetess, in short, is lame and illogical, and since the English language is flexible enough to allow these calls, we’d better leave it alone. However, there is an interesting note in his jeremiad:
With the impending expansion of women’s vocations, feminine vocations are a particular need of the future; everyone knows the inconvenience of not being sure if a doctor is male or female;…
For all his late Victorian buzz, Fowler foresaw an edge: most of our current uses of gender modifiers To be related to profession (female doctor, female senator, female restaurant owner). And he has some manuals on that score. About Ladyhe wrote:
Lady prefixes the names of vocations as a sign of gender (female doctor, author, secretary, & c.) is a cumbersome alternative to a feminine name, which should take precedence when it exists or can be created; in the default of that, women or female will be better Lady…
But Fowler had some further thoughts on female And women. After noting that the noun female became “reasonably outraged” for being largely a biological indication, he went on to say
It is unreasonable to extend this resentment to the use of the adjective female; but the confused extension itself can account for the obvious avoidance of the natural phrase women’s suffrage & clumsy usage women’s suffrage instead of.
my hobby for female via women seems to be grammatical in nature: he notes that shoemaking women (a noun) in the role of an adjective is “just naughty” when there is a perfectly fine adjective to use instead: female.
Fowler set the tone for the conversation that would take place in the late 20th century. Linguists and scholars of sexist language have, over the decades, formulated the general rule by which We are currently active. Lady preferably a deprecated modifier and should be avoided:
…if, in a particular sentence, both women And Lady may be used, the use of the latter tends to trivialize the subject under discussion, often subtly mocking the woman involved. —Robin Tolmach Lakoff, Women’s Language and Place: Text and Commentary1975
When choosing between female And women as a modifier, the advice to use is broken down. Some advocates for women:
Although it is generally better to use women or women as adjective…
but allow that female is also an appropriate choice:
… will be at female seems more appropriate. However, use it when you want to use it male in a similar situation or when clarification is needed; gender-specific adjectives are often gratuitous and disdainful… — Rosalie Maggio, Unbiased word finder: non-discriminatory language dictionary1992
In his book, Lakoff uses female as the gender modifier of choice, even going so far as to dichotomy with the construction of “comedians” at a time.
Some preferences for women over women are the retention of Fowler’s grammar points: female is an adjective while women Not:
According to the Guardian style guide, using “woman” and “woman” in this way is simply wrong, because, according to the guide, they are not adjectives. — Maddie York, guardOctober 11, 2014
but the animal meaning of female can be unshakable for some people:
Female connotes a biological category. … I avoid women in my writing because it feels disrespectful, as if I’m treating the people I’m referring to as mammals and not humans. —Deborah Tannen, quoted in New York Times MagazineMarch 18, 2007
So while all agree that Lady as modifier has been removed — although we still see the modifier Lady in current English prose—there is a division between the use of women And female as modifiers, with some preferring one over the other. And yet, for all the confusion, there’s better advice out there:
It’s jarring to hear phrases like female lawyer, female doctor, female booksellerand of the Air Force airwoman. It sounds condescending, even if it wasn’t intended. — Bryan Garner, Garner’s Modern English Usage2016
Categories: Usage Notes
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