What is gender sensitivity?
Gender sensitivity is the act of being sensitive to the ways people think about gender, so that people rely less on assumptions about traditional and outdated views on the roles of men and women. In language and the humanities, gender sensitivity often gets expressed through people’s language choice. People can choose more inclusive language that doesn’t define gender, and many new words that are gender neutral have entered languages like English to substitute for more gender specific terms. For centuries, many words referring to all people were specifically masculine. Terms like “man,” and “mankind,” exclude females. While some people argue that such terms encompass women, it’s been argued that true gender sensitivity moves past these terms to include all and exclude none. Many of the early feminists built this case, and it continues to be asserted that gender-exclusive terms have a belittling effect on women.
