TOW#551 — How long does it take to change your perception of a particular problem? How long did it take me?
How long do you think it takes for a person to change their perception of a problem? And for them to then change their behaviour?
Naturally, I don’t know the answer to these questions because such information is impossible to obtain given that each person is a story unto themselves. But I do know how long it took me to change one thing that I was doing to the point that it had become spontaneous.
It’s more than 15 years since I first came across the term ‘gender sensitive language’, i.e. for equal linguistic representation of men and women in the public sphere, the media and in everyday speech. I was among those who at first considered it ridiculous and who were annoyed by every expression we hadn’t heard of or used before.
“Female soldier? Soldieress?! Who even says that?!”, was the usual reaction that we all laughed along with for what we felt was yet another Western innovation they were trying to teach us after the war. Still, I should mention that I grew up in a family where feminism was alive and kicking, totally unaware that there was a specific term for it. I wrote about how my Grandad used to send all his granddaughters off to school by saying “men can indeed dig holes, but women need an education so that they can earn for themselves”. In my house, my Dad did the dishes more often than my Mum, plus there was the time my brother saw the lady next door behind the sewing machine and said “Wow, this is the first time I’ve seen a woman sewing!”
Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean that we used gender sensitive language or that we were used to it. And I did resist it, I admit, despite the fact it was geared towards empowering my own sex.
At one point though I got interested in the topic and read a few articles and academic studies. There was just no way to contradict the arguments I encountered there.
Because, if we can have ‘housemaid’, ‘stewardess’ and ‘secretary’, then why can’t we have soldieress, engineeress and directress? Is it simply because we’re not used to it, or because it sounds strange, or is it something more specific that that?
This issue is something I began to notice more frequently over the years — it sort of just happened, slowly, bit by bit.
Five or six years ago I realised I’d gotten really annoyed when I heard or read something like “the award was presented by the director of such and such” when referring to a woman. “What do you mean a director and a woman?!” you might think. But would the crown fall off your head if you said directress? She’s a women, can’t she also be seen?!
Then, I saw my own sign-off on social media, which was ‘Hana Kazazović — Blogger’.
“Yes, fine, blogger’s a word we’ve taken from English, but if everything else is written in our language then why should I leave it in English?”, I thought. And I changed it, to ‘Bloggeress’.
It took me about ten years for all of this to become almost spontaneous and for me to start using a lot of expressions without thinking about which gender I need to put the words into. I must say, from the moment I admitted to myself that it all makes sense and that it matters, I did my best and corrected my texts or myself in speech when I noticed a mistake. I didn’t always notice them, of course. Decades-long habits aren’t so easy to fix.
Still, over time, it’s become so automatic that the other day, during a rather heated discussion, I bashed out ‘directress’ and ‘engineeress’ and noticed them as soon as I’d said them out loud. At that moment I forgot what we’d been talking about because a bell rang in my head going, “Yes, it worked, you no longer have to think about it, you’re using them automatically and they’re now a part of you!”
And that made me very happy, for two reasons.
The first is that I really think it’s important for us to have female engineers around us, because it’ll make it easier for us to get used to the fact that all these male sounding jobs aren’t reserved only for men. And it’ll make kids’ choices easier too, because once they get used to the idea and to the fact that some women are awesome programmers or make robots all day, they won’t be inherently afraid of such interests, or believe that it’s definitely not for them.
Another thing that made me happy is the fact that my own personal experience confirmed to me that campaigns to raise awareness of certain problems work, and make sense. Yes, it’s slow, or perhaps it’s better to say not fast enough. And, yes, they don’t affect everyone equally, nor can they affect as many people as we’d like. Or need.
But, my experience shows that it’s possible to see results and achieve the desired changes, and it’s important to me that I know that.
Hana Kazazović
If you would like to receive these texts by e-mail or you think that some of your colleagues, associates or friends might be interested in them, please get in touch at
