Gender marking in job titles

One of the chief issues with which the movement for gender-neutral language has been concerned is that of gender (sex) specificity in job titles.

A gender-specific job title is a name of a job that also specifies or implies the gender of the person performing that job. For example, in English, the job title stewardess implies that the person is female; the job title policeman implies that the person is male. A gender-neutral job title, on the other hand, is one that does not specify or imply gender, such as firefighter or lawyer. In some cases it may be debatable whether a title is gender-specific; for example, chairman appears to denote a male (because of the ending -man), but the title is also applied sometimes to women.

Proponents of gender-neutral language generally advocate the use of gender-neutral job titles, particularly in contexts where the gender of the person in question is not known or not specified. For example, they prefer flight attendant to stewardess or steward, and police officer to policeman or policewoman. In some cases this may involve deprecating the use of certain specifically female titles (such as authoress), thus encouraging the use of the corresponding unmarked form (such as author) as a fully gender-neutral title.