The official guardians of the French language on Thursday ended centuries of male linguistic dominance by allowing feminine words for all professions.
The notoriously conservative Academie Francaise, which polices the language and has long resisted change, said there was now “no obstacle in principle” to the wholesale feminization of job titles.
French women doctors could soon be referred to as docteures and teachers as professeures in its official dictionary, which lists presidente as the wife of a head of state rather than a female leader of a nation.
Despite more than half a century of feminism, the language of French working life has remained resolutely male.
Most jobs titles are automatically masculine, apart from a few notable exceptions such as nurse and child-minder.
The male-dominated Academie had previously fiercely opposed change, branding attempts at “inclusive writing” in government documents as an “aberration” that put French “in mortal danger.”
It found a powerful ally in French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, a sometime novelist who has called for a clampdown on bids to make French more female-friendly.
He said last year that the “masculine [form] is a neutral form which should be used for terms liable to apply to women,” but in a historic about-turn on Thursday the male-dominated Academie, whose mostly elderly members wear an ornate uniform and sword, approved a report advocating change compiled by three of its four active female members.
One, novelist Dominique Bona, had pointedly complained that it was no accident that the masculine was “chosen as the dominant gender” in French.
The “Immortals,” as they are known, had been expected to cogitate for at least a week on the vexed issue, but instead waved the report through by “a large majority” in a matter of hours.
“The Academie considers that all developments in the language aimed at recognizing the place women have in society today can be envisaged,” it said.
It also opened the door to a more organic usage by saying that it “did not wish to dictate the rules by which titles should be feminized,” saying it would be an “insurmountable task.”
It said the debate about the use of the -eure ending in docteure, for example, “does not constitute a threat to the structure of the language as long as the final ‘e’ is not pronounced.”
Writer and academy member Frederic Vitoux, who heads the Commission for the Enrichment of the French Language, said before the decision that he believed the reform would pass.
“For some professions it is simple,” Vitoux said.
“We have never had to asked ourselves should we be able to say ‘actress,’ but for others professions there are objective difficulties, because they cause confusion or don’t work with the root of the word,” he said.
“How, for example, can we say a female doctor [medecin] without confusing it with medecine [the science of medicine]?” Vitoux asked.
However, French speakers in neighboring Belgium and Switzerland have long found ways around the problems.
The official language body in French-speaking Canada ruled on the issue in 1979, urging feminization wherever possible. A female doctor there can be called une medecin or une docteure.
Although the French have feminized professions informally for years, the end of the long official block comes as attempts to bring gender-neutral “inclusive writing” to state documents has sparked impassioned debate.
As it stands, a mixed-gender group of readers, for example, will always be masculine as long as there is one man in the room.
Campaigners for “inclusive writing” — who believe the language is implicitly sexist — say in these situations the French word for readers, lecteurs, should be written as lecteur.rice.s.
However, inserting full stops into words has horrified the purists, and been sent up by others as complicated and confusing.
In 2015, the French High Council for Equality Between Women and Men issued a guide urging public bodies to use feminine forms for jobs such as “firefighter” and “author” where applicable.
Some critics such as philosopher Raphael Enthoven object to what they see as France’s prescriptive approach to the language, which is spoken by about 275 million people worldwide.
They say usage should be allowed to evolve naturally over time.
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS