Month: February 2018

Originally published in the February 2018 Health Equity Impact Assessment Community of Interest Newsletter

When we think about health equity, we think a lot about language. The language we use to describe various populations is, as always, evolving. One of our favourite resources, Let’s Talk: Populations and the Power of Language (also in French), covers the current landscape well for many groups – but gender isn’t mentioned. Considering how central gender is to many people’s identity, the language we use in equity-related contexts should be as gender-inclusive as we can make it.

We are all “they”
One increasingly popular and accepted tactic is to use “they” in the singular sense. Canada has already adopted “he or she” and its variants (he/she, s/he) instead of the theoretically generic “he”. The singular “they” is the next step towards linguistic gender inclusion. It simplifies sentence structures – he or she should raise his or her concerns with his or her caseworker becomes they should raise their concerns with their caseworker. It implicitly includes not just “he” and “she” but also others who may not identify with either gendered pronoun. Grammar sticklers feeling a frisson of discomfort with this usage may content themselves with evidence that the singular “they” is not new.

“They” has a baby
Gender issues can be particularly tricky when we’re talking about pregnancy and newborn health. It’s easy to fall into stereotypically gendered (and often heterosexist) language in this context. Health Nexus ran an article recently in the Ontario Health Promotion E-Bulletin on the risks of cannabis on fertility, pregnancy, breastfeeding and parenting which demonstrates some of our ideas about writing inclusively about reproductive issues.

One trick, in my experience, is to describe states or functions instead of identities or roles. We can talk about those who are pregnant (a state) instead of pregnant women (an identity) or mothers (a role) for example, as not everyone who is pregnant identifies as female. For example, Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) crosses the placenta from the pregnant person to the fetus. On the same theme, we can talk about parents instead of mothers. To avoid heterocentrism, we can talk about partners or co-parents or even support people (which includes community supports and anyone supporting a single parent) instead of husbands.

Another trick is to switch to the second person: Being high while parenting can affect how you interact with your child, for example, or if you are unable to stop using cannabis completely, try using less and less often. This can feel overly directive, though.

Even better, we can rewrite sentences to avoid mentioning gender at all: Cannabis use may affect the ability to become pregnant.

As increasing numbers of people shake off the gender binary like an ill-fitting coat, let’s all be glad that – with a bit of thought and effort — English can be flexible enough to be equitable!

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