‘Chest-feeders’: How inclusive language risks ‘dehumanising women’
Replacing words like “women” and “mothers” with terms like “birth-givers” and “pregnant people” in research risks dehumanising women and would harm decades of work to improve the visibility of women in medical literature.
“Desexing the language of female reproduction has been done with a view to being sensitive to individual needs and as beneficial, kind, and inclusive,” they write in the paper. “Yet, this kindness has delivered unintended consequences that have serious implications for women and children.” The source information compared disease severity of COVID in pregnant women with non-pregnant women, but when the department removed the word “women” it compared “pregnant people” with “non-pregnant people”, changing the meaning to incorrectly include men.
Researchers have lamented the exclusion of women from medical research for decades and researchers haveProfessor Gamble said the trend of erasing or redefining the term “women” had started to sweep the world and that “coming from Australia it seems that the way the UK has moved to erase the use of sexed language has been rapid and extreme”.
“It’s really important each group gets consulted and has a sense of ownership; it’s just about listening to people so the resources are there.” The paper supports this approach.
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