EQUALITY GUIdE - KU Leuven

96 Equality Guide
! The use of a male as well as a female job title makes a text illegible and complex
(e.g. saleswoman/salesman, sales(wo)men, male or female nurse). Moreover, it is
not clear whether the sequence of the male and female job title is important. Additionally,
the use of two expressions is nearly impossible in spoken language.
! Problems also occur with compounds containing masculine terms (e.g. doktersjas
[doctor’s coat] or with compound nouns (e.g. directeur-generaal [director-general])
107 .
! The creation of new derivatives and compounds goes against the tendency towards
a more economical use of language.
! Since the feminine forms are often derivatives of masculine expressions, the feminine
form can be seen as an explicit deviation from the norm.
! The masculine derivative of a female job title may not refer to the same interpretation
of the position. Therefore a new masculine expression will have to be created,
which may become confusing for the language user. In Dutch, the tasks of a
secretaresse [secretary] are not identical to those of a secretaris [clerk], which is at
first sight the masculine derivative of the feminine form.
The lack of consensus is mainly caused by the fact that both neutralization and differentiation
involve the creation of new job titles. Newly created job titles may be laughable,
difficult to pronounce or grammatically incorrect. In these cases, one might find it
hard to convince the language users to use the new terms on a daily basis. A possible
solution may be to refer to the activity rather than to the actual person (e.g. camera
instead of cameraman, direction instead of director).
3.2.2. Legal provisions
Laws in favour of the advancement of feminization of job titles have been passed in
Swiss, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Austria 108 . In Belgium, several stages of the
recruitment process have also been laid down by law. The law of 4 August 1978 forbids
each form of gender discrimination with regards to the conditions for admission,
the criteria for recruitment and selection and the content of a job, regardless of the
sector or the employee’s statute. The law also forbids “to refer to the sex of the employee
in vacancies and job ads, or to add in those offers and advertisements conditions
that may, even inexplicitly, mention or suggest the sex of the employee. This law
concerns the public and private sector, and has to be applied to employees as well as
to self-employed persons” [own translation of art. 121]. In practice, anyone writing a
job ad has to consider this law and must follow the procedure that excludes each preference
for a male or female employee.
The Belgian law does not mention any specific use of language. Therefore, the question
remains whether the language user can freely choose which job title to use in a
107 De Caluwe (2001), op. cit., p. 75.
108 Verbiest, A. (1997). De oorbellen van de minister: taal en denken over vrouwen. Amsterdam: Contact,
p. 80.