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Sexual harassment can be devastating and have tremendous impact on the emotional well-being, physical health, and vocational success of those who experience it. It is especially important for outdoor education program staff to proactively address sexual harassment because these programs often take place in remote locations that may make escape from a sexually harassing situation difficult or impossible; because outdoor adventure programs are often male-dominated, and intensive male bonding may create an environment that leads to violence against women; and because the power differential between outdoor adventure leaders and participants may prevent participants from objecting to or resisting sexual harassment. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission definition of sexual harassment is divided into its three parts, and examples from adventure programs are provided to illustrate each one. Proactive strategies include developing a sexual harassment policy that includes easy reporting procedures; ensuring that staff understand the policy; training staff in interrupting harassment and in using nonsexist language and teaching styles; ensuring that participants understand the policy; considering the dynamics of sexual harassment when forming groups; and providing a mechanism for communicating with someone outside of the immediate situation when in remote locations. Tables present definitions of sexual harassment, effects associated with sexual harassment trauma syndrome, and sex-related names of rock-climbing routes. Contains 20 references. (TD) more...

Language can both reflect and shape the way people are treated in today's society. It can be used to open doors when it is gender inclusive, or to create barriers when it is not. The goal of this booklet is to encourage gender-inclusive language. Bias-free language is effective language. A number of studies demonstrate that an audience is more likely to "get the message," and to remember information, when inclusive language is used. This guide can help eliminate gender bias in writing, speech, and images. It is not meant to be a complete treatment of the subject, but rather a practical resource. The chapters are: (1) The Language Barrier: An Introduction to the "why" of inclusive language; (2) It's a Matter of Clarity: Reasons for, arguments against, inclusive language; (3) Sticky Wickets, and How to Avoid Them: Some advice on the "rules" of inclusive language; (4) Words to the Wise: A glossary; (5) Language on the Move; (6) Women Speak up About Sex-Biased Language; (7) Cracking Down on Bias: Insiders share their strategies; (8) Word Buffs, Take Note; and (9) Suggested Reading, a 12-item annotated bibliography. (JBJ) more...

This two-part guide frames gender equity lessons within the context of Native American history and culture, thereby increasing student awareness and knowledge in these key equity areas as they study U.S. history and social studies. Part 1, "Understanding Gender Equity," describes activities that increase student understanding of general gender equity issues: sex-role stereotypes, effects of biased language, the relationship between stereotypes and prejudice, stereotypes in the media, and students' own assumptions and prejudices. Part 2, "Stories That Teach Gender Equity," uses focused student readings and activities to prompt student thought and discussion on cultural and gender roles. Emphasizing critical thinking and cooperative learning, lessons lay out measurable objectives for teachers and include lessons plans, procedures, handouts and worksheets, teacher background information, and evaluation tools. Lessons focus on Cherokee leaders Nanyehi' (Nancy Ward) and Wilma Mankiller; the Kaw (Kansa) initiation rite, a survival test for boys and girls; the Osage ballerina Maria Tallchief; traditional roles of Indian women and their part in the tribal decision-making process; a drama in which four teenage girls discuss major life decisions; and a story of a day in the life of a dysfunctional family. (SV) more...

This manual contains nine learning modules on sex equity topics contributed by state sex equity personnel from Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, New York, Nevada, and Virginia. Each module provides one or more lesson plans for learning activities that combat traditional sex role stereotypes and behaviors. Information is included on setting up the activities, resources, time frames, and audience; handouts and transparency masters are provided in many cases. The modules cover the following topics: career stereotypes, an icebreaker for gender stereotyping, media influence on sex role stereotyping, successful life skills curriculum, marketing and public relations for vocational education programs, managing sexual harassment, preparing to meet the needs of hard-to-serve adult reentry students, "boys will be boys" (male role stereotypes), and nontraditional occupations and comparable worth. (KC) more...

Questions how Western theatre's gender bias is extended and perpetuated by higher education institutions. Examines pedagogical alternatives to teaching beginning acting classes other than with monologue books. Suggests that by focusing on character rather than story, the culture of monologue books does not encourage students to look for aesthetic choices. Concludes that the American undergraduate theatrical experience can be harmful, particularly to young women. (PM) more...

Presents and describes a narrative writing assignment used by the author in a developmental writing course that helps to demonstrate to students how and why sexist language usage can limit thinking, sometimes injuriously, and that concretely illustrates how language and gender stereotyping interact causally. Describes the assignment, how it is used in class, and class discussions resulting. (SR) more...

This learning unit is designed to sensitize educators to gender differences in learning styles, to help identify specific needs and issues for women adult learners, to help educators to identify their own gender biases, and to help teachers to develop strategies for eliminating gender bias from their own classrooms. The unit is divided into three sections: (1) gender differences in learning styles, (2) adult learners, and (3) gender fair instructional techniques and classroom interactions. Each section includes didactic materials, experiential learning activities, student worksheets, and transparency templates. A bibliography lists 46 references. (KC) more...

Developed and written so that Alaska school district personnel with a minimal amount of experience could conduct an equity inservice presentation, this module provides trainer instruction sheets, handouts, and activity sheets suitable for a 3-hour inservice presentation on language bias. The module begins with a chart outlining the objectives, methods, techniques, time, and resources needed for the training session. The purpose of the module is to: (1) have participants examine ways in which males and females are treated differently in the English language; (2) increase participants' awareness of how this biased language affects students; and (3) provide participants with an opportunity to design lessons to raise students' awareness of sex bias and sex role stereotyping. After an equity in language information sheet, a sample agenda, an introductory activity, and a pretest, the module presents materials and instructions for a sexism in language activity, a sex fair language game, an equity in language activity, a humorous activity on sexism in language, and 16 sample lesson plans. A posttest, a concluding activity, and evaluation instruments are attached. (RS) more...

This handbook is intended to assist teachers in removing sex bias and sex-role stereotyping from the classroom. Following some introductory thoughts about sex bias and examples of sex bias and school-based sex-role stereotyping, the handbook briefly discusses Title IX of the Civil Rights Act. The rest of the handbook contains 35 classroom activities for increasing students' understanding of sexism and awareness of how it affects their self-concept and decisions as well as personal interactions. Some of the activities to expose sexism in the classroom are the following: understanding the concept of stereotyping; attitude surveys comparing male/female expectations; cultural exaggeration of sex differences; elimination of gender from occupational titles; elimination of sex bias/stereotyping in "at-home" jobs; examining the effects of sexism on salaries; students' perceptions of psychological gender differences; social stereotypes versus reality; analyzing texts for sexism; sexist language; sexism in advertising; sexist humor; and women in leadership. Each activity includes purpose, time, materials needed, and steps to conduct the activity. A bibliography lists 82 books, 25 journal articles and documents, 12 audiovisual aids, and 12 works cited in preparing the guide. An evaluation report on the use of the handbook is also included. It shows that the project was successful in training teachers to change their behavior and that the 352 students involved changed their self-evaluations on sex roles. (KC) more...

Media education can be taught by analyzing the ways popular media represent the sexes. Discusses stereotyped gender images in popular culture and outlines classroom activities investigating modeling poses, images of ideal and successful males and females, gender sensitive language, sex role portrayal, and violence for a media literacy unit using research, analysis, and communication skills. (PEN) more...

Intended to promote bias-free and non-sexist language in scholarly writing, this book was developed after a 1988 survey undertaken by the American Association of University Presses indicated that scholarly publishing was lagging behind other areas of publishing in adopting correct language usage. The book is the result of the work of a task force on bias-free language and encompasses recommendations from many individuals and organizations. It offers a set of guidelines for gender-neutral and bias-free language that can be implemented by university presses. The book provides concise, practical chapters on usage in gender, race, ethnicity, citizenship and nationality, religion, disabilities, sexual orientation, and age. (NKA) more...

Considers how sex discrimination and sexist language have affected educational environments, particularly basic writing and English-as-a-Second-Language instruction. Provides four practical suggestions for college teachers of bilingual and/or bidialectical students to alleviate such attitudes and behaviors. (HB) more...

This guide is intended to be used with a videotape in conducting a campus workshop for faculty on equitable and effective teaching techniques. Part 1 of the material covers the minutiae of conducting a campus workshop such as planning, location, schedule, handouts, facilitators, step-by-step instructions, and evaluation. Included are a sample invitation letter, checklists of the materials needed for the workshop, a list of agenda points, a gender communications quiz, suggestions for role playing, a list of strategy overview points, and evaluation tips. Also included are two optional exercises; one dealing with the "chilly classroom" and the other with gender issues. Part 2 discusses how to recognize and deal with inequitable and inadvertent behaviors, and the effect of differential treatment. It suggests ways to warm up a chilly climate and to help teachers become more effective. Also included are two checklists to assess faculty member behavior; a humorous one on how to discourage women from participating in class and the other listing ten ways to encourage women to talk in class. (Contains 31 reference notes and 14 suggested readings.) (CH) more...

This handbook is intended for students, teachers, journalists, executives, and court and government workers who want to eliminate sexism from their English. It offers sound advice on gender-inclusive or gender-neutral language. Among its topics of interest are: the reasons to avoid sexist language; sensible alternatives to offensive terminology; how to recognize and eliminate underlying discriminatory language; and 10 ways to circumvent sexist writing. Chapters in the handbook are arranged for quick and easy reference to help solve problems when they arise. A glossary of nonsexist "do's and don'ts" and alternative terms concludes the handbook. (NKA) more...

This activity file grew out of research of an "Images of Women in Development" project of the Centre for Global Education at the University of York, England. The activities are intended for students in the 8- to 13-year-old range to learn more about gender issues. The activities are divided into four sections: (1) awareness-raising activities in which stereotyping, including unconscious stereotyping, can be confronted and examined; (2) research activities that allow children to discover gender discrimination in their own environment; (3) group discussion activities that can be used in conjunction with the above activities; and (4) role plays and simulations that place participants in situation that enable them to experience the effects of gender inequalities, to take alternative perspectives, and to develop possible strategies and solutions for dealing with discrimination. Cross-curricular themes are encouraged. (EH) more...

Discusses the teaching and practicing of feminism in university-level English-as-a-Second-Language classrooms, focusing on political and social attitudes toward feminism, gender issues, the incorporation of feminist readings and ideas into courses, and classroom practices in regard to citing women as authorities, varying pronoun references, and proscribing sexist remarks. (18 references) (MDM) more...

This guide helps Wisconsin educators at all grade levels and in all content areas identify specific methods to help them achieve equity in their classrooms. Although most suggestions are simple ones, others may require some time to develop new ways of teaching, grading, and interacting with students. The following strategies are outlined in this document: (1) instructor verbal and written communications; (2) instructor classroom materials; (3) topics, content of courses; (4) physical classroom setting; (5) classroom assignments and projects; (6) interaction between instructors and students; (7) agenda for staff inservice training on the pupil nondiscrimination statute (Wisconsin statute 118.13); and (8) role of a local equity coordinator. An appendix contains the following information: (1) goals of equity in schools; (2) locus of control; (3) some definitions; (4) examples of attributional styles; (5) teacher feedback that provides a message to students' attributional styles; (6) implications for educators; (7) classroom interaction; (8) eight print and two video resources; (9) the economic costs of discrimination; (10) social costs of discrimination for females and males; (11) male/female differences in educational achievement--how women and men lose; (12) does language have an impact on attitudes and behaviors?; (13) process for selecting unbiased instructional materials; and (14) checklist for identifying bias in resource materials. (NLA) more...

Addresses the problem of sexist language use in outdoor education. Suggests the use of gender-free language, including using appropriate pronouns, avoiding irrelevant modifiers, abstaining from referring to women in terms of appearance or marital status; avoiding the use of patronizing terms; and increasing the number of examples showing women in jobs and roles typically ascribed to men. (LP) more...

The scientific community is increasingly aware of the necessity to embrace pluralism and consistently represent major and minor social groups. Currently, there are no standard evaluation techniques for different types of biases. Accordingly, there is an urgent need to provide evaluation sets and protocols to measure existing biases in our automatic systems. Evaluating the biases should be an essential step towards mitigating them in the systems. This paper introduces WinoST, a new freely available challenge set for evaluating gender bias in speech translation. WinoST is the speech version of WinoMT which is a MT challenge set and both follow an evaluation protocol to measure gender accuracy. Using a state-of-the-art end-to-end speech translation system, we report the gender bias evaluation on four language pairs and we show that gender accuracy in speech translation is more than 23% lower than in MT., This work is supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 947657), the Catalan Agency for Management of University and Research Grants (AGAUR) through the FI PhD Scholarship, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya with the collaboration of Banco de Santander and the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación through the project PID2019- 107579RB-I00 / AEI / 10.13039/501100011033., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version) more...

Since its national debut in 1987, Fresh Air with Terry Gross has been a highly acclaimed and much adored weekday magazine among public radio listeners. Each week, nearly 4.8 million people turn to Peabody Award-winning host Terry Gross for insightful conversations with the leading voices in contemporary arts and issues. The renowned program reaches a global audience, with over 620 public radio stations broadcasting Fresh Air, and 3 million podcast downloads each week. Fresh Air has broken the mold of 'talk show' by weaving together superior journalism and intimate storytelling from modern-day intellectuals, politicians and artists alike. Through probing questions and careful research, Gross's interviews are lauded for revealing a fresh perspective on cultural icons and trends. Her thorough conversations are often complemented by commentary from well-known contributors. Fresh Air is produced at WHYY-FM in Philadelphia and broadcast nationally by NPR., (1.) Novelist TAHMIMA ANAM is the author of the new novel, The Start Up Wife, which at the center is about a new social media platform that customizes rituals and ceremonies for people who are not religious. It's also about the couple who start the platform and the consequences of it on their marriage. ANAM is also the author of a trilogy of novels set during and after the Bangladesh Liberation War, in which Bangladesh won its independence from Pakistan, in 1971. Her new novel has been recommended on a lot of summer reading lists, including in the Washington Post. (THIS INTERVIEW CONTINUES INTO THE SECOND HALF OF THE SHOW). more...

We invited authors of selected Comments and Perspectives published in Nature Machine Intelligence in the latter half of 2019 and first half of 2020 to describe how their topic has developed, what their thoughts are about the challenges of 2020, and what they look forward to in 2021., Postprint (author's final draft) more...

Gender bias is affecting many natural language processing applications. While we are still far from proposing debiasing methods that will solve the problem, we are making progress analyzing the impact of this bias in current algorithms. This paper provides an extensive study of the underlying gender bias in popular contextualized word embeddings. Our study provides an insightful analysis of evaluation measures applied to several English data domains and the layers of the contextualized word embeddings. It is also adapted and extended to the Spanish language. Our study points out the advantages and limitations of the various evaluation measures that we are using and aims to standardize the evaluation of gender bias in contextualized word embeddings., This work is supported in part by the Catalan Agency for Management of University and Research Grants (AGAUR) through the FI PhD Scholarship and the Industrial PhD Grant. This work also is supported in part by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, the European Regional Development Fund, the Agencia Estatal de Investigación through the postdoctoral senior grant Ramón y Cajal and the Projects EUR2019-103819, PCIN-2017-079 and PID2019-107579RB-I00., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version) more...

Gender bias negatively impacts many natural language processing applications, including ma-chine translation (MT). The motivation behind this work is to study whether recent proposedMT techniques are significantly contributing to attenuate biases in document-level and gender-balanced data. For the study, we consider approaches of adding the previous sentence and thespeaker information, implemented in a decoder-based neural MT system. We show improve-ments both in translation quality (+1 BLEU point) as well as in gender bias mitigation onWinoMT (+5% accuracy)., This work is supported in part by the Catalan Agency for Management of University and Research Grants (AGAUR) through the FI PhD Scholarship. This work is also supported in part by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, the European Regional Development Fund and the Agencia Estatal de Investigacion, through the postdoctoral senior grant Ramón y Cajal, contract TEC2015-69266-P (MINECO/FEDER,EU) and contract PCIN-2017-079 (AEI/MINECO)., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version) more...

Multilingual Neural Machine Translation architectures mainly differ in the amount of sharing modules and parameters among languages. In this paper, and from an algorithmic perspective, we explore if the chosen architecture, when trained with the same data, influences the gender bias accuracy. Experiments in four language pairs show that Language-Specific encoders-decoders exhibit less bias than the Shared encoder-decoder architecture. Further interpretability analysis of source embeddings and the attention shows that, in the LanguageSpecific case, the embeddings encode more gender information, and its attention is more diverted. Both behaviors help in mitigating gender bias., This work is supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 947657)., Preprint more...

Different strategies of gender-fair language have been applied to reduce a male bias, which means the implicit belief that a word describing an undefined person describes a man. This male bias might be caused by the words themselves in terms of generic masculine or masculine forms or by androcentrism (the conflation of men with humanity). In two experiments, we tested how different gender-fair strategies used as labels of an unknown social target (an applicant in a recruitment situation) could eliminate the male bias. The three types of gender-fair strategies tested were: (a) paired forms (he/she), (b) traditional neutral words (e.g., singular they, “the applicant”), or (c) gender-neutral third-person pronouns actively created to challenge the binary gender system (ze, Swedish hen). The two experiments were performed in Swedish with 417 undergraduates in Sweden and in English with 411 U.S. participants recruited online. In Swedish, the third-person gender-neutral pronoun singular (hen) was used. In English, several forms of such gender-neutral pronouns have been suggested (e.g., ze). In both experiments, results indicated that paired forms and actively created gender-neutral pronouns eliminated the male bias, whereas traditional neutral words contained a male bias. Thus, gender-fair language strategies should avoid using traditional words. Consequences of using paired forms and creating new gender-neutral words are discussed. We argue that an actively created gender-neutral pronoun is of highest value because it is more inclusive. © 2018, The Author(s). more...

Artificial intelligence systems copy and amplify existing societal biases, a problem that by now is widely acknowledged and studied. But is current research of gender bias in natural language processing actually moving towards a resolution., This work is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the European Regional Development Fund (MINECO/ERDF, EU) through the programme Ramón y Cajal., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (author's final draft) more...

Una guia que proposa deu punts per acabar amb els estereotips que fomenten la desigualtat mitjançant l’ús del llenguatge.

The purpose of this study was to investigate attitudes towards gender and predicates denoting intelligence among Swedish and U.S. citizens between 20 and 35 years (N = 72). Research suggests that stereotypes on gender and cognitive ability begin to affect children around six years of age. These stereotypes may affect children over time and influence what career paths they will one day pursue. Further, it has been suggested that parents’ own stereotypes on gender and intelligence are projected onto their children. For this reason, I would argue that it is important to explore the attitudes on gender and intelligence as those will affect the next generation. By distributing two online questionnaires, one in Swedish and one in English, I investigated to what degree the “brilliance = male property” stereotype was activated when the participants were confronted with predicates denoting (e.g., brilliant) or connoting (e.g., professor) high cognitive ability. Moreover, I compiled a corpus study in order to explore, first, the gender distribution of these intelligence predicates, and second, the linguistic contexts in which they occur. The results of the corpus study suggest that predicates that are vague but semantically strong, e.g., genius, mastermind and scientist, tend to have a larger male bias than predicates that are semantically weaker, e.g., smart and intelligent. The results of the questionnaires, on the other hand, did not support the claim that words of intelligence have a male bias. However, a strong female bias could be observed, which suggests that the predicates of intelligence are not gender-neutral. more...

Social identity theory encourages the importance of maintaining a positive self-image, and positive view of one’s own group (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). A person’s sense of possible-selves (the imaginations of who they are and who they could be in any given interaction) can become damaged when interacting with an individual who encourages threatening stereotypes (Brown, 1998). The present study aims to extend the understandings of how one’s image can be threatened, via “social identity-threat,” using sexist humor. In this study, participants’ ideations of their “possible-selves” will be measured by how they respond to self-survey questionnaires. Participants will imagine interactions with a graduate Teaching Assistant who engages in humor by telling jokes. The humor will be sexist or neutral in manner. The imagined interaction will contain either a confederate (TA) who offers the jokes, or a different confederate whose behaviors are ambiguous and does not participate in the jokes. I hypothesize that by degrading and diminishing women, sexist humor will derogate and threaten women’s social identities, and break their sense of self-worth, in a way that isn’t limited to contextual factors. more...

The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between language and gender. Gender, is a term that denotes the distinction: male or female. It is the term that relates to roles which boys and girls, women and men are socialised into, that is their respective and different types of behaviour, attitudes and so on. Further, whilst sex indicates a biological fact or distinction, gender refers to the social stereotypes and expectations of the way in which men and women should and do behave, that is, it describes socially constructed categories and roles based on sex. Theories on women's language suggest that females use a language style that reflects diffidence, shyness, and lower self-confidence, indicating a lack of commitment or strong opinion. One device is euphemism, where a person uses words such as “fudge” or “heck” instead of profanity. Another device is the use of tag questions and hedges, The researcher conducted interviews as sources of data for analytical study. The population comprised of Basotho in the Free State province. Boys and girls, men and women as well as elders were interviewed with regard to the manner in which they speak. The views of different researchers in Chapter two, combined with the results of the empirical study revealed the following about the difference between language and gender. From the foregoing, it is evident that the language of men and women is different. What is evident from this is that from, the cultural approach to language and societal behaviour became apparent because they are trained as part of the societal norms at a young age. Men were speaking with self-confidence and forcefully, whereas women’s language was characterised by hedges and some adjectives to name a few. In most of their responses, men were a bit harsh, and the eye contact was not compromising as they wanted to emphasise male importance in the community. Another observation is that women seemed to be more apologetic when they from time to time respond more...

Since its national debut in 1987, Fresh Air with Terry Gross has been a highly acclaimed and much adored weekday magazine among public radio listeners. Each week, nearly 4.8 million people turn to Peabody Award-winning host Terry Gross for insightful conversations with the leading voices in contemporary arts and issues. The renowned program reaches a global audience, with over 620 public radio stations broadcasting Fresh Air, and 3 million podcast downloads each week. Fresh Air has broken the mold of 'talk show' by weaving together superior journalism and intimate storytelling from modern-day intellectuals, politicians and artists alike. Through probing questions and careful research, Gross's interviews are lauded for revealing a fresh perspective on cultural icons and trends. Her thorough conversations are often complemented by commentary from well-known contributors. Fresh Air is produced at WHYY-FM in Philadelphia and broadcast nationally by NPR., (1.) LUCY WORSLEY is chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces in England. Her new book, If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home, is the companion to her BBC series of the same name. Worsley explains why the flushing toilet took two centuries to catch on, why strangers used to share their beds, and why kitchens were cut off from the rest of the home. (THIS INTERVIEW CONTINUES INTO THE SECOND HALF OF THE SHOW.) (2.) Linguist GEOFF NUNBERG explores a word that has become highly charged: slut. more...

Research has shown that sexist humor allows men to express sexism by replacing nonsexist norms in a situation with a norm of tolerance of sex discrimination (Ford, Armstrong, & Edel, 2008). Our study extends those findings by testing the hypothesis that disparaging humor fosters the "release" of prejudice against only groups for whom society’s attitudes are ambivalent and thus for whom the expression of prejudice is dependent on immediate social norms to justify it (e.g., women, homosexuals). The expression of prejudice against groups like racists is socially acceptable and should not be dependent on events like disparaging humor to justify it. Consequently, disparaging humor should have little effect on the release of prejudice against them. One hundred sixty four participants completed measures of prejudice against homosexuals and racists (Cotrell & Neuberg, 2005). Participants read four jokes that disparaged homosexuals, or racists, or that contained no disparaging content. Next, participants allocated budget cuts to four student organizations including one that either supported racist or homosexual agendas. Results supported our hypothesis. Prejudice against homosexuals predicted the amount of money participants cut from the homosexual organization relative to the others upon exposure to anti-homosexual jokes (ß = .61, p < .001) but not neutral jokes (ß = .10, ns) or anti-racist jokes (ß = .13, ns). In contrast, attitudes toward racists did not differentially predict budget cuts allocated to the racist organization upon exposure to anti-racist jokes (ß = .30, ns), neutral jokes (ß = .12, ns) or anti-homosexual jokes (ß = .12, ns). more...

Humor researchers have emphasized the role that sex differences and attitudes toward women play in moderating amusement with sexist humor. In-group/out-group conflict and the adherence to hostile sexist attitudes have been shown to accurately determine the evaluation of sexist humor. The present research contributes to this literature by addressing the role that the social context plays in determining whether people adopt a humor mindset versus a serious mindset for interpreting sexist humor. We hypothesized that the norms of some social contexts (office) discourage the adoption of a non-serious "humor mindset" for interpreting sexist humor, leading people to perceive the humor as offensive. In contrast, the norms of other contexts (comedy club) encourage the adoption of a non-serious humor mindset, causing people to perceive the humor as less offensive. One hundred eighteen women and 84 men were prompted to imagine themselves in a comedy club, office or neutral setting and then asked to rate both sexist and neutral jokes in terms of offensiveness. It was found that imagining oneself in a comedy club significantly reduces offensiveness ratings of sexist humor. The office context had the opposite effect, where offensiveness ratings increased. Thus the adoption of a non-critical humor mindset can be manipulated by social context. The evaluation of sexist humor is not merely a function of gender in-group/out-group differences or attitudes towards women. The social context in which the jokes were told is also an influential piece to the puzzle. more...

Este trabajo pretende analizar las exigencias que derivan del principio de igualdad y de otras disposiciones constitucionales en relación con la imagen de la mujer que transmiten los medios de comunicación. Para ello se examinan pormenorizadamente las leyes que desarrollan dichas disposiciones constitucionales, especialmente las leyes de igualdad y las leyes contra la violencia de género aprobadas en los últimos años, así como los mecanismos de supervisión y control del cumplimiento de las mismas. Por otro lado, se analiza también con especial atención la jurisprudencia que han sentado en la materia los órganos competentes de resolver los correspondientes conflictos, sobre todo los relacionados con la publicidad discriminatoria., This paper analyses the steps required to implement the equality principle and other constitutional provisions concerning the image of women conveyed by the media. To that end, it examines in detail the laws that implement these constitutional provisions, especially the equal rights laws and gender violence laws approved in recent years, and also the enforcement measures that ensure the observance of these laws. This paper also analyses in detail the decisions taken by the institutions which resolve disputes related to the application of these rules, especially disputes related to discriminatory advertising. more...

The language about women reflects the attitudes of men toward women and to the extent that women use them, the attitudes of women toward themselves. The relationship between language and the attitudes of those who use it is not one-way. Language reflects the attitudes of those who use it but it can also create and maintain attitudes and stereotypes. Hence the feminists' attack on the English language. The trend to using non-sexist language is a conscious effort to change our thought by changing our language. The present study investigated the existence of a relationship between attitudes toward women, social attitudes, and people's perceptions of sexist language for 151 participants. The sample included two student groups (internally enroled students and extramural students) and a non-student sample. The sample completed self-report questionnaires on their judgements of language as sexist, their perceptions of sexist language as a problem, and attitudes toward women and social issues. The findings demonstrated that there is a relationship between sexist language and the attitudes people espouse. Liberal social attitudes and liberal attitudes toward women and gender roles were found to correlate with easier recognition of linguistic sexism. Traditional attitudes toward gender roles and conservative social attitudes resulted in a failure to perceive gender-biased language as sexist. more...

Summary: There is an ancient genre of discourse which has served primarily to rationalize masculine privilege. The aim of the authors of this discourse has been to establish the "natural" superiority of men by methodically certifying the "natural" inferiority of women. This genre of discourse is misogynous discourse. Designed to amplify and expose the degrading effect of misogynous discourse on the human psyche, this analysis of misogynous language and discourse is achieved through a critical technique known as defamiliarization, which allows the reader to examine the discourse from a new and incongruous perspective. In this instance defamiliarization is accomplished simply by reversing the gender of the language, making it seem as though it was written by women about men, instead of by men about women. The final goal of this study is to demythologize this language and thereby render it neutral., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Collection: FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection, Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1990. more...

Since its national debut in 1987, Fresh Air with Terry Gross has been a highly acclaimed and much adored weekday magazine among public radio listeners. Each week, nearly 4.8 million people turn to Peabody Award-winning host Terry Gross for insightful conversations with the leading voices in contemporary arts and issues. The renowned program reaches a global audience, with over 620 public radio stations broadcasting Fresh Air, and 3 million podcast downloads each week. Fresh Air has broken the mold of 'talk show' by weaving together superior journalism and intimate storytelling from modern-day intellectuals, politicians and artists alike. Through probing questions and careful research, Gross's interviews are lauded for revealing a fresh perspective on cultural icons and trends. Her thorough conversations are often complemented by commentary from well-known contributors. Fresh Air is produced at WHYY-FM in Philadelphia and broadcast nationally by NPR., INT.1: Novelist John Barth, one of the most inventive of American writers. His works include The Floating Opera, The Sot-Weed Factor and Giles Goat-Boy. His new novel, set on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, is titled The Tidewater Tales. (Rebroadcast. Original broadcast July 23, 1987.) REV.1: Classical Music Critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews a recent recording of Alexander Zemlinsky's "The Mermaid," a work forgotten for almost 80 years. Zemlinksy's greatest influence was on the Viennese School of 20th century music. INT.2: Sportswriter and HBO boxing analyst Larry Merchant. He discusses the world of boxing, the disintegration of neighborhood boxing clubs in the big cities and how television has changed the image of the boxer and the audience response. REV.2: Language Commentator Geoffrey Nunberg discusses whether it's possible, or even desirable, to eliminate gender bias in language. more...

Since its national debut in 1987, Fresh Air with Terry Gross has been a highly acclaimed and much adored weekday magazine among public radio listeners. Each week, nearly 4.8 million people turn to Peabody Award-winning host Terry Gross for insightful conversations with the leading voices in contemporary arts and issues. The renowned program reaches a global audience, with over 620 public radio stations broadcasting Fresh Air, and 3 million podcast downloads each week. Fresh Air has broken the mold of 'talk show' by weaving together superior journalism and intimate storytelling from modern-day intellectuals, politicians and artists alike. Through probing questions and careful research, Gross's interviews are lauded for revealing a fresh perspective on cultural icons and trends. Her thorough conversations are often complemented by commentary from well-known contributors. Fresh Air is produced at WHYY-FM in Philadelphia and broadcast nationally by NPR., INT.1: EDWARD JAMES OLMOS. He plays Lt. Castillo in the popular television series "Miami Vice" and is now starring in a soon-to-be released film "Stand and Deliver." Olmos also starred in the films "Zoot Suit" and "The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez" and "Blade Runner." REV.1: Classical music critic LLOYD SCHWARTZ reviews "Lutoslawki Conducts Lutoslawski," a new Phillips recording featuring Polish musician WITOLD LUTOSLAWSKI. The recording features Lutoslawski's Cello Concerto, with Heinrich Schiff as soloist. INT.2: Wine critic ROBERT PARKER. Widely regarded as the world's most influential wine critic, Parker takes a strongly consumerist view of his craft, warning consumers about overrated, overpriced wines. His opinions are recorded in his monthly newsletter The Wine Advocate. A Parker rating of 90 for a wine (on a 50-100 scale) virtually guarantees a sellout for the shipment. REV.2: Language Commentator GEOFFREY NUNBERG continues his discussion of sexism in language. He says the obvious concerns - like whether to use "mankind" or "humanity" - only scratch the surface. more...

Rappel du travail mené sur la différence sexuelle et la langue d’une part, le sexisme de la langue, des discours, des images et des mentalités d’autre part. Études linguistiques variationnistes puis discursives : comment la langue désigne les femmes, les parle, les rend invisibles (question du genre morphologique) ; comment les discours quotidiens ou médiatiques les parlent, les nomment (cf. en français la question de la féminisation des noms de métiers). Et études sémiologiques (ou de l’imaginaire social – Castoriadis) – images données des femmes ou imposées aux femmes (analyses de discours, de publicités)., Thirty years of research on gender differences, or The language of women and sex differenciation in language, speech and imagery We begin by a reminder of the work conducted on sexual differences and language on one hand, sexism in language, discourse, images and mentalities on the other. Linguistic studies on variation and speech : how does language refer to women, how does it talk about them, how does it make them invisible (the question of morphological gender); how do everyday speech and the media call women, how do they refer to them (cf. the problem of the feminisation of professional titles in French). And semiological studies (or the social imagination – Castoriadis), images given to or imposed upon women (speech analysis, analysis of advertising). more...