“No se preocupe la señora marquesa” 1: A study of gender bias in example
sentences in the RAE grammar textbook
Silvina Bongiovanni*
Indiana University
On March 4th 2012, El País, a major newspaper from Spain, published a report on
language and sexism issued by the Real Academia Española (Royal Academy of the
Spanish language 2, RAE henceforth) titled Sexismo lingüístico y visibilidad de la mujer
(‘Linguistic sexism and women’s visibility’). This report was written by Ignacio Bosque,
a member of the Academy, and endorsed by 26 other members. The text analyzes nine
guidelines for non-sexist language use published in the last five years in Spain by
universities, state and county governments, and labor unions. In this report, Bosque
(2012) claims that, while sexist uses of language exist, these guidelines make language
recommendations that are foreign to Spanish language practices. In addition, he states
that these recommendations infringe Spanish grammatical norms, and that they ignore the
fact that the lack of correspondence between gender and sex need not entail
discrimination. Needless to say, the report was placed under media scrutiny, both in
Spain, and in the Spanish-speaking world at large, as evidenced by the publication of
numerous responses attacking and supporting the stance taken by the RAE.
For the RAE, there is no need for guidelines for non-sexist language use, as gender
marking in the Spanish language is not sexist, but only grammatical. Nevertheless, gender
markers are not the only location for gender bias. As Macaulay and Brice (1997) showed,
the types of nouns phrases (NPs), both through their syntactic function and thematic role,
also play a role in sexist language use. Thus, gender bias and stereotyping do not reside
solely in the choice of lexical items and/or gender agreement markers. Specifically,
Macaulay and Brice (1997) show that it also extends to the syntactic level, through
demonstrating that constructed examples in syntax textbooks are biased towards malegendered NPs and are highly stereotyped. Building on the findings by Macaulay and
Brice (1997), this study examines gender bias in a grammar textbook produced by the
RAE in an effort to ascertain the need for non-sexist language use guidelines.
The present paper is organized as follows. Section 1 discusses the non-sexist
language guidelines and presents the major criticisms in the report by Ignacio Bosque
(2012). Section 2 presents relevant previous literature. Section 3 addresses the research
questions and the methodology, followed by section 4, where I present the results of the
analysis. Section 5 will discuss the findings and section 6 will summarize the major
findings and implications.
*I would like to express my gratitude to Prof. Julie Auger and Sara Zahler for their suggestions
and support throughout. I would also like to thank the two reviewers, Sean McKinnon and Olga
Scrivner, and the Editor, Valentyna Filimonova, for all of their valuable comments. All errors
remain my own.
1
Do not worry, Mrs. Marquise
2
The Real Academia Española is the institution that oversees the correct use of the Spanish
language. It has the aim to preserve the Spanish language and to promote linguistic unity, by
producing dictionaries and grammars, as exemplified in its slogan “[it] cleanses, fixes and
enhances” (in Spanish, Limpia, fija y da esplendor).
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1. Non-sexist language guidelines and women’s visibility
The debate around language sexism and the Spanish language was sparked by a
report that the RAE published in March, 2012. This report was written by Ignacio
Bosque, a well-known Spanish syntactician, who is also an academician at RAE. The
report criticizes non-sexist language use guidelines published in Spain the last five years,
and nine of them in particular. It should be noted that there are many more language
guidelines in existence. Even the Instituto Cervantes, the non-profit organization created
by the Spanish government as the pedagogical arm for regulating the Spanish language in
Spain and around the world, published a non-sexist language use guideline in 2011.
Interestingly, this guideline was not included in the report.
The criticisms in the report focus on two aspects of the guidelines. First, the report
criticizes the fact that linguists, i.e. language professionals, were not consulted in the
elaboration of these guidelines. In doing so, these guidelines contravene language
recommendations issued by the RAE and the Asociación de Academias 3 (Association of
Spanish Language Academies). These recommendations are usually part of the topics
covered in high school Spanish-language classes. As a result, these guidelines stand
against the RAE itself and language educators in general.
Second, any strategies to avoid the use of the generic masculine are heavily
criticized in the report. Spanish, like many other languages, uses male-gendered noun
phrases (NPs) to refer not only to men, but also to (a) individuals whose gender is
unknown or unspecified, (b) groups of individuals composed of males and females, and
(c) human beings in general. The examples in (1) illustrate the uses of the generic
masculine in Spanish.
(1)
Generic Masculine
a. Cantas igual de bien que un profesional
‘You sing as well as a professional’
b. Todos los estudiantes habían analizado dos novelas del siglo xix
‘All students had analyzed two Nineteenth century novels’
c. Los hombres son amados por Dios
‘Men are loved by God’
Additionally, the generic masculine extends to agreement markers. In Spanish,
adjectives and determinants agree with nouns in gender and number. For example, in
sentence such as La casa es roja ‘Thefem-sing house is redfem-sing’, the adjective roja ‘redfemsing’ and the article la ‘thefem-sing’ agree with the noun casa ‘house’. Also, sentence (1c)
above shows agreement marking in the passive voice. In Spanish, the participle in the
passive voice agrees in gender and number with the subject. Thus, the participle amados
‘lovedmasc-pl’ agrees with the noun hombres ‘men’.
Given that the use of the generic masculine hides the presence of women, in an
effort to ensure and encourage the visibility of women, most of the non-sexist language
guidelines under scrutiny advocate the use of other linguistic strategies to achieve a
symmetrical and equitable representation of women and men. The guidelines combat
linguistic sexism on two fronts: gender-neutralization and gender-specification.
3
The Asociación de Academias de la lengua represents the union of all the separate academies in the
Spanish-speaking world
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According to Pauwels (2003, p. 556), gender neutralization aims to minimize linguistic
marking of gender in human referents. Some of the strategies that guidelines suggest that
would fall under the heading of gender neutralization include the use of collective nouns
to refer to groups, instead of using the singular generic male. For example, resorting to
the use of nouns such as el profesorado ‘the faculty’, el estudiantado ‘the student body’,
el personal ‘the staff’, instead of using generic los profesores ‘the professors’, los
estudiantes ‘the students’ and los trabajadores/los empleados ‘the employees’,
respectively.
Gender specification, on the other hand, refers to the opposite strategy: making
gender marking explicit and symmetrical (Pauwels, 2003, p. 556). The guidelines suggest
pairing NPs, such that they mark both male and female gender. For example, instead of
los trabajadores ‘themasc workersmasc’ these guidelines advocate for los trabajadores y las
trabajadoras ‘themasc workersmasc and thefem workersfem’. This is the strategy that is mostly
criticized in the report. One of the reasons is that NP pairing increases the gap between
bureaucratic language and ‘everyday’ language, as legibility is compromised. Texts that
have paired NPs are redundant and repetitive, and as a result, they impair legibility. For
this reason, the generic masculine is preferable.
Another reason to prefer the generic masculine is that, as claimed by the report,
women do not feel excluded by its use. Women do not perceive that the generic
masculine leaves out any feminine reference(s). Thus, Bosque (2012) advocates for the
continued use of the generic masculine, as RAE deems it firmly established in the
Spanish grammatical system. In fact, any practices that deviate from the generic
masculine are judged as radical in the report, and the pairing of NPs in particular. What is
more, news articles in favor and against the report published post-March 4th in El País,
almost exclusively defend or attack the use of the generic masculine, with no reference to
other linguistic mechanisms and linguistic outcomes. Those that defend the use of the
generic masculine (for example, del Corral, 2012; Lafuente, 2012; Lindo, 2012; among
others) emphasize Bosque’s (2012) point that women do not feel excluded by its use.
However, it should be noted that the generic nature of the masculine could also be
construed from a different perspective. Carmen Bravo (as cited in Manrique Sabogal,
2012) points out that the fact that the generic masculine is so “firmly established” is due
to, among other reasons, an institutional androcentric bias. In other words, higher
frequency paves the way to normativity.
To a certain extent, the debate around linguistic sexism and non-sexist language
guidelines has turned into a debate about the generic masculine. Based on the main points
brought up in this debate, which I have just outlined, two questions remain. First, how
generic is the generic masculine in Spanish? Previous research in other languages (for
example, research by Pascal Gygax and colleagues: Gygax & Gabriel, 2008; Gygax,
Gabriel, Sarrasin, Oakhill, & Garnham, 2008; Gygax, Gabriel, Garnham, & Oakhill,
2009) shows that the generic masculine is not always interpreted as generic, but rather as
having a masculine connotation. Second, is the generic masculine the only manifestation
of an androcentric bias? This study addresses this second question. In the next section, I
present relevant previous literature that suggests that this is not the case.
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2. Previous research
Textbooks are the quintessential educational material. They not only inform and
structure curricula, but also they have an important role in shaping and reinforcing values
and beliefs. Several researchers have looked at sex biases in textbooks, both in linguistic
practices (Hellinger, 1980; Lee & Collins, 2009; Macaulay & Brice, 1994, 1997; Porreca,
1984) and in the use of images (Law & Chan, 2004; Lee & Collins, 2009; Porreca, 1984).
Given that the textbook under analysis in the current study does not incorporate images, I
will not comment on the literature that investigates the use of images.
Research has shown that textbooks often exhibit gender biases, as expressed, for
example, in the ratio of male to female characters, the occupational roles performed by
males and females, and the ordering between males and females. For example, Hellinger
(1980) finds that three English language textbooks used in German schools convey the
image of a patriarchal society. In her study, she analyzes linguistic phenomena that can
show exclusion, subordination and degradation of women. Hellinger (1980) investigates
exclusion by analyzing references to women in the titles, their participation in the
storyline, and the proportion of female and male speakers in the short stories included in
the textbook. She finds that women appear in the title of the story 8% of the times, that
females account for 30% of the participants and that male speakers outnumber female
speakers (80% vs. 20%, respectively). To analyze subordination, she looks at how
women are introduced in the texts, and the information provided about them. The study
shows that most women in the textbooks remain anonymous or are introduced as wives
and mothers. When females are identified with a first name or a full name, they are
children and adolescents. With regards to the information provided, Hellinger (1980)
finds that women usually have lower status jobs, such as a waitress or a nurse. Only six
women belong to the “high status” domain. Four of them present inherited social status,
as they belong to royalty, and two gained their higher social status through access to
higher education. Finally, Hellinger analyzes the distortion of women as represented by
the types of predicates that involve women. The analysis shows that females are
portrayed as passive, unintellectual and emotional.
Along the same lines, Porreca (1984) examines sexism in fifteen ESL textbooks by
analyzing the number of occurrences per gender, occupational visibility, adjectives and
the order of appearance. The findings show that males outnumber females with a ratio of
1.77:1. Additionally, in NPs where a male co-occurs with a female, males appear first
more often. In this context, the ratio of men-first to women-first is 2.96:1. With regard to
occupational roles, the occupation of males is specified more often than that of women.
The ratio of men to women in this category is 5.87:1. In order of frequency, men are
presidents, writers and policemen. Conversely, women are teachers, actresses, doctors,
and secretaries. Finally, the use of adjectives shows that women are used more often with
adjectives that indicate emotionality or state of mind (e.g. sad), physical appearance (e.g.
beautiful), environmental description (e.g. rich), and physical condition (e.g. strong).
Men, on the other hand, appear more often with adjectives that refer to reputation (e.g.
popular), and intellect or education (e.g. bright).
In two studies published in the ‘90s, Monica Macaulay and Colleen Brice examine
the need for the Linguistic Society of America’s (LSA) non-sexist language guide by
analyzing constructed examples in syntax textbooks. The textbook in this study is
different in that it is meant for higher education, and specific to a particular domain,
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namely syntax. Nevertheless, as with the previous studies mentioned, the researchers find
that males are more frequent than females in the examples included in the syntax
textbooks. Their analyses also include the syntactic functions and thematic roles of male
and female participants and show that gender bias is widespread in syntax textbooks.
Specifically, in their 1997 study, they find that male-gendered NPs are almost three times
more frequent than female-gendered ones. The analysis also shows that female-gendered
NPs show up as objects of actions performed by males or are recipients of men’s talk and
gifts. Males, on the other hand, appear more as subjects of actions and are more active
and engaged in intellectual activities. Also, if and when women appear, they are defined
in terms of their appearance and mainly through their relationship to men. When
comparing the use of nouns such ‘women’ and ‘men’, the analysis revealed that ‘adult’
males are more frequent than ‘adult’ females, who are often referred to as children. With
regards to employment, males occupy a wide variety of occupations that range from
prestigious to less prestigious jobs. Women are usually employed in teaching or their
work is not specified. Finally, in romantic activities, women outnumber males in positive
situations, such as getting married, whereas males outnumber females in negative
situations, like getting a divorce.
More recently, Lee and Collins (2009) study how women are represented in
contemporary Australian English language textbooks, both ESL books and textbooks
aimed at native speaker education. They analyze the number of female and male
characters, the number of male and female mentions, and their social and domestic roles.
The results show that male characters and male mentions predominate in the texts
analyzed. The ratio of men to women is 1.35:1 for characters and 1.40:1 for mention. The
analysis of social roles shows that men occupy a wider range of social roles. Men occupy
positions that range from farmer to politician. Women, on the other hand, occupy
positions such as fashion designer and salesperson. For domestic roles, both women and
men are depicted as playing traditional roles such as mother and father, wife and
husband, and daughter and son. As for order of appearance, men tend to be mentioned
first. The ratio of male-first to female-first mentions is 1.54:1, which is lower than the
ratio reported by Porreca (1985). These findings combined show that, while there have
been positive developments in relation to issues of gender equality, there is still room for
improvement.
Relevant to the present study is research by Cabeza Pereiro and Rodríguez Barcia
(2013) who analyze linguistic sexism in the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española
(DRAE), the dictionary produced, edited and published by RAE. In their article, they
posit that minimizing women is the semantic strategy at play in how definitions are
constructed in the dictionary. The DRAE minimizes women by, for example, defining
women as “wife of X”, but never defining men as “husband of Y”. Thus, a gobernadora
‘governorfem’ is defined as the wife of the ‘governormasc’, but males in stereotypical
female professions, such as azafato ‘flight attendantmasc’, are not defined as the husband
of a ‘flight attendantfem’. While some entries have been updated and included in recent
editions, others continue to portray women with outdated definitions. The authors
conclude saying that this linguistic ideology of minimizing women still persists
throughout the dictionary.
The cumulative message of these studies is that language guidelines are not entirely
unnecessary. By providing mechanisms to portray women and men in a more equitable
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manner, non-sexist language guidelines contribute to overcome sexism in language use.
For this reason, the present study analyzes a grammar textbook produced by the
institution that criticizes the non-sexist language use guidelines, with the aim to evaluate
the need for these guidelines.
3. Methodology
The present study analyzes the examples in a grammar textbook published by the
RAE, namely the Nueva Gramática de la lengua española. Manual (‘New Grammar of
the Spanish Language: Manual’, Manual henceforth). This textbook, which was
published in 2010, is a 943-paged abbreviated version of the 3800-paged full edition. The
Manual was created with pedagogical goals in mind. It should be noted that as this is a
work published by an institution, it does not bear the names of those who wrote it, or who
edited its contents.
The primary aim of the current study is to draw attention to the fact that gender
bias and stereotyping are pervasive in the grammar textbook produced by the same
institution that condemned, and to a certain extent ridiculed, the creation of non-sexist
language guidelines. A secondary aim of this study is to highlight the type of biases
present in the Manual in an effort to show that non-sexist language guidelines are not
unnecessary, as was posited by Ignacio Bosque (2012) in the mentioned report. Thus, the
research question that guides the present study asks whether the examples in the Manual
show a gender bias, and if so, what is the bias present in the Manual?
In my methodology, I follow that of Macaulay and Brice (1994, 1997) for the most
part. However, because of differences between Spanish and English, I made a few
adjustments to better fit the corpus under study. The current study examines grammatical
and ungrammatical sentences in eight chapters of the Manual. The Manual is not a syntax
textbook, but a Spanish grammar. Thus, it reviews aspects of syntax as well as aspects of
phonology, morphology, parts of speech, etc. The eight chapters under examination come
from the syntax section of the book, which comprises 308 of the 943 pages in the
textbook, and which cover topics such as active and passive voice, impersonal sentences,
types of utterances, subordinate clauses, comparative structures and negation. This
section of the textbook was chosen to allow comparison with the results in the research
by Monica Macaulay and Colleen Brice.
Macaulay and Brice (1997) only analyze simple constructed sentences. The Manual
includes constructed sentences, but it also includes sentences that come from newspapers
and literary texts. This paper analyzes both types of examples. While it is true that the
newspaper and literary examples were not written for the purpose of the textbook, they
were selected, and in that regard they are also capable of portraying a gender bias.
Additionally, in the Manual, simple sentences are actually scarce. Thus, the current study
includes both simple and complex sentences, grammatical and ungrammatical,
constructed and cited. For comparison purposes with previous literature, all examples
under analysis constitute complete sentences. That is, the corpus under study does not
include examples of NPs, such as el abogado con quien trabaja ‘the lawyermasc with
whom s/he works.’
The number of examples extracted is 2238. However, not all of them are included
in the corpus of analysis. First, Spanish is a pro-drop language. Thus, subject pronouns
can be omitted. As a result, many of the examples do not have an overt subject. As such,
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in a sentence such as Teme al fracaso ‘S/he is afraid of failure’, since there is no overt
subject, the gender of the subject cannot be established. Additionally, many of the tokens
include pronouns, either as subjects or as objects, that refer to grammatical persons that in
Spanish do not mark for gender, as is the case with subject pronouns such as yo ‘I’ and tú
‘yousing’, and object pronouns, such as me ‘me/myself’, te ‘you/yourselfsing’, nos
‘us/ourselves’, os ‘you/yourselves’ and se ‘them/themselves’. Therefore, sentences such
as Tú te cansas ‘Yousing get tired’ and Ten paciencia (tú) ‘Have patience’ were excluded
from the analysis, as it is not possible to establish the gender of tú ‘you’.
In some cases where the subject has been dropped, the gender is available through
gender agreement markers. In Spanish, determinants and adjectives agree in gender and
number with the noun they modify. Thus, in a sentence such as Sé que está contento ‘I
know he is happy’, even though the subject of está contento has been dropped, the
adjective shows that it is a singular male participant. In this case, even though the subject
has been dropped, the example is included in the corpus of analysis, as it is possible to
determine that the referent is male.
Furthermore, there are a number of sentences that include an overt subject that is
not realized by a pronoun, i.e. NPs. However, many of these NPs include nouns that do
not refer to a person, as in El asunto será visto en la reunión de mañana ‘The issue will
be addressed in the meeting tomorrow’. These sentences are not included in the corpus of
analysis. Moreover, some full NP subjects do refer to human participants, but instead
they include generic nouns, such as gente ‘people’, or turistas ‘tourists’. Thus, sentences
such as Aquí atienden muy bien a los turistas ‘Tourists are well treated here’ are not
included in the corpus of analysis either.
In many cases, the examples are comprised of more than one sentence. For
instance, some examples present a dialogue, such as —¿Vas a dejar solo al niño? —¿Al
niño? ¡Si tiene veinte años! ‘—Are you going to leave the childmasc alone? —The
childmasc? He’s 20 years old!’ In these cases, each sentence is analyzed as a separate
token. Additionally, sometimes a sentence is repeated with minor changes. For example,
the sentences Si llamó alguien, esa fue Marta ‘If anybody called, that was Marta’ and Si
llamó alguien, fue Marta la que llamó ‘If anybody called, it was Marta who called’ are
minimal pairs that contrast a syntactic structure. These examples are not considered as
instances of the same token. Minimal pairs like these are considered separate tokens. The
reason why I do not remove these repetitions is that, as Butler (as cited in Linneman,
2013) indicates, hierarchies operate through a process of repetition. Thus, repetitions
contribute to a potential gender bias.
Furthermore, in sentences where there are coordinated or subordinated clauses,
often the subject is explicit in one of the clauses and deleted in the other one. We see this,
for example, in El procesado ha sido revisado y no tiene consigo nada con que pueda
atacar al señor Director ‘The defendant has been searched and (he) does not have with
himself anything with which to attack Mr. Director’. Here, the subject is explicit in the
first clause (El procesado ha sido revisado ‘The defendantmasc has been searchedmasc’),
but it is not explicit in the second clause (no tiene consigo nada con que pueda atacar al
señor Director ‘(he) does not have with himself anything with which to attack Mr.
Director’). In these cases, the second clause is included in the corpus of analysis, even
though the subject is not explicit, as it is clear who the subject is and its gender on
account of the first clause.
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After excluding the aforementioned types of examples, and splitting as two tokens
the doublets, the total number of sentences to be analyzed is 514. Each token was coded
for gender of the participant (male/female), syntactic function of the participant (subject/
direct object/ indirect object/ oblique/ vocative/ agent phrase), thematic role (agent/
patient/ experiencer/ percept/ recipient/ theme), and verb. In addition, for descriptive
purposes, the tokens were coded for type of example (constructed/ literary), person (first /
second/ third) and number (singular/ plural). In addition to this coding, the examples were
also examined for the types of terms with which female- and male-gendered NPs are
associated.
Following Macaulay and Brice (1994, 1997), in order to tally the arguments and the
thematic roles associated to them accurately, the propositions in each sentence were
spelled out. As a result, the total number of propositions analyzed is 848. For each token,
the verb predicates were identified and, where the subject and its gender could be
identified, they were entered into the count. Thus, a sentence such as Elena lo llamó para
disculparse ‘Elena called him to apologize’ was spelled out as Elena lo llamó para
[Elena se disculpa con él] ‘Elena called him to [Elena apologizes to him]’. Thus, in this
case, we have two female subjects (i.e. Elena), a male direct object (i.e. lo ‘him’), and a
male oblique (i.e. con él ‘to him’). Conversely, this sentence shows two female agents
(i.e. Elena), a male patient (i.e. lo ‘him’) and a male recipient (i.e. con él ‘to him’).
Additionally, as Macaulay and Brice (1994) observe, one NP can be interpreted as
bearing more than one thematic role. I will follow the authors in assigning one thematic
role per NP, in order to avoid inflating the count. The thematic role assigned will be the
one considered to be the most salient to the best of the judgment of the author.
There are several taxonomies of thematic roles available in the literature (Dowty,
1991; Jackendoff, 1972; among others). In order to facilitate comparison with the
analyses in Macaulay and Brice (1994, p. 453; 1997, p. 801), the current study adopts
their thematic roles, primarily drawn from Cowper (1992), Jackendoff (1972) and Dillon
(1977). Table 1 below presents the list of thematic roles under consideration with their
definition. The examples included in the table come from the corpus under analysis.
Table 1. Taxonomy of thematic roles, adapted from Macaulay and Brice (1994, 1997)
Thematic role
Definition and examples
Agent
The initiator, doer of the action; must be capable of volition or deliberate
action
Benefactive
Este chico escribe bien
‘This kidmasc writes well’
The one for whose benefit the event takes place
Comitative
Y ve a la manifestación, si te atreves a dar la cara por ella y por todos
‘And go to the demonstration if you dare show your face for her and for
everyone’
An entity that accompanies another
Content
Eva se encontró con [el [que estudió con ella]]
‘Eva run into [the guy that studied with her]’
The content of intellectual activity
¿Tú sabías lo del hijo?
‘Did you know about the son?’
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Experiencer
The individual who feels or perceives the event. Includes intellectual
activities.
Estoy encantado de felicitarla
‘I am delightedmasc to congratulate youfem’
Force
Goal
Instrument
Location
Patient
Ella ya lo sabía, así que alguien se lo había dicho
‘She already knew it, so someone had told her’
An entity that acts upon another entity or brings about a state; must be
incapable of volition
Pues ya estás volando por ella
‘Well, you are already flying for her benefit’
The location or entity towards which motion (concrete or abstract) takes
place
Voy al médico a las siete para que me atiendan a las ocho
‘I am going to the doctormasc at seven so that I am seen at eight’
The object with which an action is performed
[No examples in the corpus]
The place (concrete or abstract), where something is, or the subject of a
possessive expression
Luisa tiene un hijo pequeño, al que adora
‘Luisa has a [young son, whom she adores]’
An entity that undergoes an action or is described. Includes subjects of
copular (i.e., equative) sentences.
El niño se despertó
‘The childmasc woke up’
Percept
El escritor ha sido galardonado en múltiples ocasiones
‘The writermasc was awarded multiple times’
An entity that is experienced or perceived
Vi a mi hijo
‘I saw my son’
Ahora la quieres menos
‘Now you love her less’
Recipient (subtype A person who receives something (concrete or abstract)
of Goal)
¿Le has entregado al profesor de Lengua el trabajo de esta semana?
‘Have you turned in to the Language Professor this week’s homework?’
Source
The location or the entity from which motion (concrete or abstract) takes
place
Theme
Cuanta más paciencia tengas, más obtendrás de él
‘The more patience you have, more you will get from him’
Occurs with a verb of motion (concrete or abstract) or location (concrete
or abstract); the thing that moves or the thing whose location is described
D. Francisco a Santa Cruz es ido / y [D. Francisco] volverá mañana
‘Mr. Francisco is gone to Santa Cruz / and he will be back tomorrow’
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4. Results
In this section, I present the results of the analysis. The data shows that male
referents are more frequent than female referents. In a corpus of analysis of 848 tokens,
there are 512 male-gendered arguments, and 336 female-gendered arguments. Men
represent 60% of the corpus of analysis, while women 40%. In line with the previous
research, female participants are underrepresented in the textbook.
In 4.1 and 4.3, the results of the analysis of grammatical function and thematic role
are presented. Section 4.3 investigates lexical choices for NPs. Finally, Section 4.5
examines the distribution of example sentences according to gender of the writer.
4.1 Grammatical function
The grammatical function of males and females provides information as to how
males and females are placed in the argument structure of predicates. All the grammatical
and ungrammatical sentences of the syntax section in the Manual were examined. Tables
2 and 3 below show the distribution of male and female-gendered arguments according to
grammatical function. The data included only considers gendered arguments. In other
words, the relative frequency of occurrence of female and male-gendered arguments is
considered in relation to the number of the total number of gendered arguments. Table 2
presents within-gender distributions. This means that the percentages in Table 2 show
how each gender distributes grammatical functions. Table 3, on the other hand, shows
across-gender distributions. That is, each percentage shows how each grammatical
function is distributed according to the gender of the argument.
Table 2. Grammatical functions within gender
Female-gendered arguments
N %
221 65.8
Subject
59 17.5
Direct object
13 3.9
Indirect object
29 8.6
Oblique
12 3.6
Vocative
2 0.6
Agent phrase
336 100.0
Total
Table 3. Grammatical functions across gender
Female-gendered
arguments
N %
221 37.1
Subject
59 52.7
Direct object
13 36.1
Indirect object
29 40.9
Oblique
12 50.0
Vocative
2 20.0
Agent phrase
336 39.6
TOTAL
Male-gendered arguments
N %
374 73.0
53 10.4
23 4.5
42 8.2
12 2.3
8 1.6
512 100.0
Male-gendered
arguments
N %
374 62.9
53 47.3
23 63.9
42 59.2
12 50.0
8 80.0
512 60.38
-10-
TOTAL
N
595
112
36
71
24
10
848
%
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
The numbers in Tables 2 and 3 show a great disparity with regards to the ratio of
males to females, but not as much with regards to syntactical function. Table 2 shows that
both genders appear more often as subjects than any other grammatical function, with
65.8% for female-gendered arguments and 73.0% for male-gendered. The ranking of
grammatical functions is very similar between genders. For females, subject > direct
object > oblique > indirect object/vocative > agent phrase. For males, the difference is
that indirect object is more frequent than vocative. Thus, the ranking is subject > direct
object > oblique > indirect object > vocative > agent phrase. Consequently, neither
female- nor male-gendered arguments appear to specialize in a grammatical function.
However, the difference between subject and direct object is more pronounced for malegendered arguments than for female-gendered ones. For female-gendered arguments, the
difference between subjects and direct objects hovers around the 50 percentage points
(65.8% vs. 17.5% respectively), whereas for male gendered-arguments it increases to 60
points (73.0% vs. 10.4%). The fact that males show a larger gap suggests that malegendered arguments are more subjects than they are direct objects.
Table 3 shows the data from a different perspective. Males outnumber females in
almost every category. Given that males outnumber females in general, this result is not
surprising. The exceptions are the vocative and the direct object. For vocative, the
genders show an equitable distribution. In the case of the direct object, females
outnumber males, which indicates that in this category females are overrepresented.
In order to establish if the frequencies of grammatical function per gender are
statistically significant, a chi-square test was run. The test examines whether the
distribution of gendered arguments between genders is significantly different. This test
was only run on a subset of the data, namely for subject, direct object, and indirect object,
since some cells have low token counts. The results show that the distribution of
gendered-NPs per grammatical function differ by gender, χ2 (2, N = 743) = 9.7, p = .008,
Cramer’s V = .114.
4.2 Thematic roles
We now turn to the analysis of thematic roles. Tables 4 and 5 below present the
results. As with the analysis of grammatical functions, the first table presents withingender results, and the second table presents across-gender results.
Table 4. Thematic roles within gender
Female-gendered arguments
N %
103 30.7
Agent
113 33.6
Patient
33 9.8
Experiencer
14 4.2
Percept
24 7.1
Recipient
8 2.4
Comitative
24 7.1
Theme
17 5.1
Other
336 100.0
TOTAL
-11-
Male-gendered arguments
N %
140 27.3
194 37.9
51 10.0
21 4.1
34 6.6
6 1.2
43 8.4
23 4.5
512 100.0
Table 5. Thematic roles across gender
Female-gendered
arguments
N %
103 42.4
Agent
113 36.8
Patient
33 39.3
Experiencer
14 40.0
Percept
24 41.4
Recipient
8 57.1
Comitative
23 34.3
Theme
17 42.5
Other
336 39.6
TOTAL
Male-gendered
arguments
N %
140 57.6
194 63.2
51 60.7
21 60.0
34 58.6
6 42.9
44 65.7
23 57.5
512 60.4
TOTAL
243
307
84
35
58
14
67
40
848
Table 4 shows that both genders distribute thematic roles similarly, though not
exactly. For female-gendered arguments, Patient and Agent are nearly equal as the most
frequent thematic role (30.7% and 33.6%, respectively). Females are patients as often as
they are agents. Males, on the other hand, are patients more often than agents (37.9% vs.
27.3%, respectively).
Table 5 shows that males outnumber females for almost every thematic role and by
large proportions, which is expected given the distribution of the data. In fact, the
proportion of male referents to female referents in each thematic role does not diverge
much from the overall ratio of 40% females to 60% males. The only exception is
Comitative, where we see the opposite trend. Females are the Comitative participant
57.1% of the times, while males, 42.9%. That is, women are represented as an
accompaniment more often than men. A chi-square test reveals that the percentage of
participants per thematic role does not differ by gender, χ2 (7, N = 848) = 4.213, p = .755,
Cramer’s V = .07.
Given the high proportion of Patients, this category was examined further. The
operationalization of Patient adopted states that patient is an entity that undergoes an
action or is described. For this reason, patients that undergo an action were analyzed
separately from patients that are described. The sentences in (2) provide examples from
the corpus. Tables 6 and 7 below show the numbers according to gender and type of
patient. Table 6 presents the results within gender and Table 7, across gender. The group
labeled “undergoes an action” includes the patients of verbs such as premiar ‘to award’
and deportar ‘to deport’. The group labeled as “descriptions” consists of the patients of
verbs such as ser ‘to be’, estar ‘to be’, and parecer(se) ‘to look (like)’. As the label
indicates, these are the participants that are described.
(2)
Patients that undergo an action
a. Queda usted despedido
‘Youmasc are fired’
b. El niño se despertó
‘The childmasc woke up’
Patients that are described
c. Luis es como su padre
‘Luis is like his father’
-12-
d. Tu hijo y mi hija se parecen
‘Your son and your daughter look alike’
Table 6. Patients within gender
Female
Undergoes action
Description
TOTAL
N
73
40
113
Male
%
64.6
35.4
100.0
Table 7. Patients across gender
Female
N
%
73
38.6
Undergoes action
40
33.9
Description
113
36.8
TOTAL
N
116
78
194
Male
N
116
78
194
%
59.8
40.2
100.0
TOTAL
%
61.4
66.1
63.2
N
189
118
307
%
100.0
100.0
100.0
For both genders, patients that undergo an action are more frequent than patients
that are described. For males, the token number of participants that undergo an action is
116 and that are described is 78. For women, the token numbers are 73 and 40,
respectively, However, when the relationship between the two types of patients is
compared, there is an asymmetry between males and females. The gap between the
participants that undergo an action and the participants that are described is wider for
female-gendered arguments than male-gendered. There is a 29-point difference between
patients that are described and patients that undergo an action for females, while for men
it is a 19-point difference. It appears, then, that women are more likely to undergo an
action, than to be described. Table 7, on the other hand, shows that the distributions
across genders follow those of the overall corpus, i.e., 40% females and 60% males.
A chi-square test of the distributions of patients per gender was run to test if there is
an association between the distribution of patients and gender. The results show that the
percentage of participants per patient category does not differ by gender, χ2 (1, N = 307)
= .698, p = .404, Cramer’s V = .048.
Macaulay and Brice also further explore the category of Experiencer, given that
women are often stereotyped as more emotional and men as more intellectual. Even
though in the Experiencer role males outnumber females, the fact that this thematic role
encompasses both emotional and intellectual activities allows examining this stereotype
with greater detail. Emotional experiencers are participants involved in activities such as
gustar ‘to like’, querer ‘to want’ and sentir ‘to feel’. Intellectual experiencers, on the
other hand, consist of experiencers of verbs such as conocer and saber ‘to know’, or
pensar ‘to think’.
Table 8 presents the count of gendered arguments for emotional and intellectual
experiencers within gender, and Table 9, across gender. These tables also include the
category “other”. “Other” experiencers include participants that perceive an event by
engaging in activities such as looking, listening or smelling, or participants that have a
physical experience, such as an illness or deafness. The sentences in (3) provide
examples.
-13-
(3)
Emotional experiencers
a. Me sentí más que avergonzado
‘I felt more than ashamedmale’
b. Tenía una novia que a la madre le encantaba ir al campo
‘S/he had a girlfriend whose mother loved going to the country side’
Intellectual experiencers
c. Mi hijo es quien me conoce de verdad
‘My son is who truly knows me’
d. Gastaba menos de lo que ella creía
‘S/he spend less than she thought’
Table 8. Emotional and intellectual experiencers within gender
Female
Male
N
%
N
%
16
48.5
23
45.1
Emotional
12
36.4
23
45.1
Intellectual
5
15.2
5
9.8
Other
33
100.1*
51
100
TOTAL
*Does not add up to 100% due to rounding
Table 9. Emotional and intellectual experiencers across gender
Female
Male
N
%
N
%
16
41.0
23
59.0
Emotional
12
34.3
23
65.7
Intellectual
5
50.0
5
50.0
Other
33
39.3
51
60.7
TOTAL
TOTAL
39
35
10
84
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
Based on the distribution of experiencers within gender in Table 8, men and women
show similar rates of emotional experiencers, namely 48.5% and 45.1%, respectively.
However, based on Table 8, male-gendered NPs are as emotional as they are intellectual.
Female-gendered NPs, however, present the gap between the two types of experiencers
(48.5% emotional vs. 36.4% intellectual). This suggests that female experiencers are less
intellectual than male experiencers, yet as emotional.
Table 9, on the other hand, shows that males are emotional and intellectual
experiencers more often than women are. However, this is not unexpected given that
women are underrepresented in the corpus of analysis. What is observable upon
examining Table 9 is that male referents represent 65.7% of intellectual experiences,
whereas they make up 60.7% of all experiencers. Thus, when referred to as an
experiencer, male referents are more likely to be represented as an intellectual
experiencer. Upon looking at the specific lexical items, no trend is discernable. Men and
women appear to be used with the same type of emotion predicates.
Given that the category “Other” presents cells with low token counts, it was
decided to run chi-square tests eliminating this information. The results show that
intellectual and emotional experiencers do not differ by gender, χ2 (1, N = 74) = .356, p =
.551, Cramer’s V = .69.
-14-
4.3 Lexical choice
In addition to examining the grammatical functions and thematic roles of
and female referents present in the corpus, the choice of lexical items used
referents was also analyzed. The types of NPs to label participants, as
employment, appearance and involvement in intellectual, romantic and/or
activities of men and women reveal a gender bias or lack thereof.
the male
with the
well as
criminal
4.3.1 Types of NP
First, the types of terms with which female- and male-gendered arguments are
associated were examined. In (4), several examples are given. Table 10 below reports the
count of gender-marked NPs and pronouns. Given that the female-gendered NPs are
underrepresented, the percentages in Table 10 represent only within-gender distributions.
Other NPs refer to the employment of the participant. These will be discussed in Section
4.3.3.
(4)
Names
a. Carlos perdió el tren, no llegará a tiempo
‘Carlos missed the train; he will not arrive on time’
b. Héctor vive en Santiago de Chile
‘Héctor lives in Santiago de Chile’
c. ¿Vienes, Camila?
‘Are you coming, Camila?’
d. Todos deseábamos que Rosa se quedara con nosotros
‘We all wished Rosa would stay with us’
Subject pronouns
e. Él dice que va a llover
‘He says it is going to rain’
f. Él se cansa
‘He gets tired’
g. Ellas se mareaban
‘Theyfem got dizzy’
h. Ella respondió: “A las cuatro”
‘She answered: “At four”’
-15-
Table 10. Gendered NPs and pronoun count
Female-gendered NPs
N
%
Boy, Girl, Men, Women
5
1.8
Niña (childfem)
Muchacha/chica (young
2
0.7
girl)
10
3.6
Mujer (woman)
Kinship terms
Madre (mother)
13
4.7
8
2.9
Hija (daughter)
2
0.7
Mujer/esposa (wife)
8
2.9
Hermana (sister)
8
2.9
Novia (girlfriend)
5
1.8
Amiga (friendfem)
2
0.7
Tía (aunt)
1
0.4
Viuda (widow)
Names
80
29.1
Name
Titles
5
1.8
Señora (Mrs)
1
0.4
Señorita (Miss)
2
0.7
Doña
Pronouns (and null subjects)
4
1.5
Indefinite pronoun
24
8.7
Subject pronoun
38
13.8
Object pronoun
11
4.0
Oblique pronoun
46
16.7
Null subject
275 100.0
TOTAL
Male-gendered NPs
N
Niño (childmasc) 4
Muchacho/chico (young
boy) 13
Hombre (man) 18
Padre (father)
Hijo (son)
Marido/esposo (husband)
Hermano (brother)
Novio (boyfriend)
Amigo (friendmasc)
Sobrino (nephew)
Abuelo (grandfather)
12
12
3
2
5
14
1
4
Name 124
Señor (Mr) 10
Don 8
Indefinite pronoun
Subject pronoun
Object pronoun
Oblique pronoun
Null subject
1
21
26
8
73
359
%
1.1
3.6
5.0
3.3
3.3
0.8
0.6
1.4
3.9
0.3
1.1
34.2
2.8
2.2
0.3
5.8
7.2
2.2
20.1
100.0
Upon examining the two categories that account for most of the data (i.e. names
and pronouns) an interesting pattern is revealed. For both male- and female-gendered
NPs, the category with the highest number of tokens is that of names. That is, 34.5% of
the male-gendered NPs are males (n = 124), whereas names represent 29% of the femalegendered NPs (n = 80). The other categories that account for the highest number of NPs
are those that include pronouns. All pronouns combined (indefinite, subject, object, and
oblique) represent 28% of the female-gendered NPs (n = 77) and 15.6% of the malegendered NPs (n = 56). If we compare these two sets of numbers (i.e. names and
pronouns) the data reveals that men are identified more often than women are. Males are
identified with a name 34.5% of the times and referred to by a pronoun at a rate of 15.6%.
Women, on the other hand, are identified with a name 29% of the times and receive a
pronoun 28%. This means that in the corpus under analysis women remain anonymous
more often than men do.
Now, turning to kinship terms, as illustrated in the sentences in (5), the data shows
that kinship terms represent 14.8% of all male-gendered NPs. Men are mostly fathers (n =
12), sons (n = 12), and friends (n = 14). These three male-gendered NPs account for more
than half of the male-gendered kinship terms (n = 38; 56.5%). Kinship terms for femalegendered NPs, on the other hand, account for 17% of all female-gendered NPs. Women
-16-
are mothers with greater frequency, as ‘mother’ is the NP with the highest concentration
of tokens (n = 13; 4.7%). However, they are also sisters (n = 8; 2.9%), girlfriends (n = 8;
2.9%) and daughters (n = 8; 2.9%). The rest of the female-gendered NPs are disseminated
across the other categories.
(5)
Mothers and moms
a. Recordó el comentario de su madre cuando se habló de aquello
‘S/he remembered his/her mother’s comment when they talked about that’
b. Si llega a enterarse tu mamá, nos castigan a los dos
‘If your mom finds out, we’ll be both punished’
c. Bueno, me voy, que mamá se queda sin almuerzo
‘Well, I’m going, otherwise mom won’t have a lunch’
Fathers and dads
d. El padre lo empujó a que se metiera en las carreras
‘The father pushed him to get into in races’
e. Lo único que se conservó intacto en la planta baja fue el saloncito chino, el
que quedó como recuerdo de su padre
‘The only thing that was kept intact in the ground floor was the Chinese hall, the
one that was left as memory of his/her father’
f. ¡Bien que te pareces (*bastante) a tu padre!
‘¡My God, you look like your (*plenty) father!’
Worthy of notice is a difference in the NPs that refer to parents. Spanish, as
English, has four lexical items for parents. For the female parent, the options are madre
and mamá, ‘mother’ and ‘mom’, respectively, and for the male parent, padre and papá,
‘father’ and ‘dad’. Like English, in Spanish one term usually designates the progenitor,
while the other term is that of affection and familiarity. Madre and padre can be labeled
as the formal choice, parallel to ‘mother’ and ‘father’ in English, and mamá and papá are
informal, like ‘mom’ and ‘dad’. A closer examination of the NPs that refer to parents
reveals that female parent terms madre and mamá are split evenly, accounting for 46% (n
= 6) and 54% (n = 7). Instead, for the male parent, padre accounts for 66.7% (n = 8) and
papá for 33.3% (n = 4). This suggests a trend where affection and familiarity occupy the
woman’s domain more than it does the male one.
Turning to the terms woman, man, boy, girl, and child, illustrated in (6) below,
Table 10 evidences another disparity between male- and female-gendered NPs. Males are
represented mostly as hombre ‘man’ (n = 18) and muchacho ‘young boy’ (n = 13), as
opposed to niño ‘male child’ (n = 4). The ratio of ‘men’ to ‘child’ is 6:1. That is, for
every six men, there is one little boy. The pattern for the female-gendered NPs is
different. There are 10 tokens of the item mujer ‘woman’, 2 of muchacha ‘young female’
and 5 of niña ‘female child’. In the case of female-gendered NPs, the ratio of women to
little girls is 2:1. This means that for almost every 2 women, there is one little girl.
(6)
Girls and women
a. Adiós, mi niña: voy a Nigeria
‘Good bye, my childfem; I am leaving for Nigeria’
b. El universo sería demasiado aburrido sin una mujer con la cual compartirlo
‘The universe would be very boring without a woman with whom to compare it’
-17-
Boys and men
c. El niño se despertó
‘The childmasc woke up’
d. Era otro hombre, no el amigo con el que había compartido mi juventud
‘He was a different man, not the friend with whom I had shared my youth’
Taken together, the representation of men and women conveys the message that
women are more likely to remain anonymous, and more likely to be represented as
children than men are.
In order to evaluate if there is an association between the distribution of lexical NPs
and their gender, a chi-square test was performed. However, because there are a number
of cells with low token counts it was decided to collapse the data in the five categories,
namely Names, Pronouns, Titles, Kinship terms, and Boy/Girl/Men/Women, to run the
analysis. The analysis reveals that the distribution of types of NPs does not differ by
gender, χ2 (4, N = 634) = 9.1004, p = .058, Cramer’s V = .12.
4.3.2 Employment
Moving to the realm of professions, there is a similar imbalance between males and
females. The data presents 123 references to employment, of which 91 (74%) are malegendered NPs and 32 (26%) are female-gendered. In the context of a corpus with an
overall distribution of 40% women-60% men, the fact that women account for only 26%
of the employed participants shows that women are also underrepresented in the category
of employment. Table 11 below presents the numbers and types of occupation for each
gender.
Table 11. Occupations by gender
Female
Occupation
N
0
Artist
1
Church
0
Business
0
Chairman/Boss/Superior
0
Doctor
3
Government/Politics
0
Philosopher
0
Mathematician
1
Professor
0
Religion
9
Royalty
1
Scientist
5
Service
1
Police person
4
Show business
0
Writer
7
Not specified
32
TOTAL
-18-
Male
N
11
4
1
7
6
13
1
1
3
0
4
1
15
1
3
10
9
91
Expressed as a ratio, men have occupations almost three times as often as women
do (2.84:1). The table broadcasts an additional bias: men show a much wider variety of
occupations, ranging from prestigious occupations, such as doctor ‘doctor’ and president
‘president’, to less prestigious ones, like chofer ‘driver’. Women, on the other hand, are
very restricted. The category with the highest number of tokens is royalty followed by the
category that includes all occupations for which not enough information to label them is
provided. In this category we find cases as the ones depicted in the sentences in (7).
(7)
Unspecified female employment
a. Laura logró su ascenso este año, pero Luis {no ~ *no el año pasado}
‘Laura achieved her promotion this year, but Luis {didn’t ~ *not last year}’
b. La contrataron por ser la más joven
‘She was hired because she was the youngest’
c. Voy a que me den un certificado para que contraten a mi hija
‘I’m going (there) so that they give me a certificate to hire my daughter’
In the sentences in (7), there is enough information to know that the women are
employed, but the type of employment is not available. In the cases where we do have
information, women are employed in lower ranked occupations, such as fondera
‘innkeeper’, or serve as entertainers, as is the case of actriz ‘actress’.
Any higher status women have pertains to the domain of Royalty. Thus, women
inherit social status with their royal titles. When they do have a job, it is not important
enough to be singled out. The message conveyed here is that women do not gain a higher
social status through their own means.
Because some cells are empty, it was decided to create three categories of
employment (i.e., Royalty, Not Specified and Other), to run a chi-square analysis to
compare statistically the distribution according to gender. The percentage of genderedNPs per employment category differs significantly by gender, χ2 (2, N = 123) = 19.179, p
= .000, Cramer’s V = .395.
4.3.3 Violence and criminal activity
Another usually stereotyped category is that of violence and criminal activity.
Under this heading, I am considering examples of verbs that express violence, like matar
‘to kill’, and participants labeled as delinquents, such as reo ‘prisoner’ and asesino
‘killer’. There are 23 clauses that involve violence and criminal activity. The sentences in
(8) provide examples, and Table 12 presents the gender of perpetrators of violence or
criminal activity, as well as the victims of it.
(8)
Violence and criminal activity
a. El reo recibió la sentencia sin inmutarse
‘The prisoner received the sentence without seeming bothered at all’
b. Ya se ha descubierto cómo entró el ladrón en la casa
‘It has already been discovered how the robber entered the house’
c. Si hubiera sido el asesino, se habrían encontrado sus huellas digitales
‘If he had been the assassin, they would have found his finger prints’
-19-
Table 12. Perpetrators and victims of violence and criminal activities
Female
Male
N
%
N
%
3
17.6
14
82.4
Perpetrator
1
16.7
5
83.3
Victim
4
17.4
19
82.6
Total
TOTAL
17
6
23
Table 12 demonstrates that men are involved in violence and criminal activity with
greater frequency than women. Specifically, men are perpetrators of violence and crime
more often than women. Male referents attack, rob, and kill in the corpus. As victims,
males are victims of the most violent crimes, mostly murder. In addition to being the
perpetrators, they are also labeled as criminals, as opposed to women, who are not
branded in this category. Some of the nouns used to describe men in this category include
reo ‘prisoner’, criminal ‘criminal’, ladrón ‘burglar’, procesado ‘defendant’, and asesino
‘assassin’. Therefore, in this category, it is males who are portrayed negatively. Men are
overrepresented. In a corpus where 60% of gendered NPs are male, this category shows
that men account for 82.6% of the NPs involved in violent and criminal activity. Due to
the low token count per cell in this table, it was not possible to run chi-square tests on this
subset of the data.
4.3.4 Appearance
Next, the category of appearance was explored. The corpus shows few instances of
references to appearance. There are 33 clauses that include a mention of physical
appearance. The sentences in (9) provide examples and Table 13 below presents the
count of arguments for which there is a mention of their appearance.
(9)
Female appearance
a. Ana no es hermosísima
‘Ana is not very beautiful’
b. Eso en ella no tiene mérito, porque es linda
‘That in her has no merit, because she is pretty’
Male appearance
c. Era igual de guapo que su abuelo
‘He was as handsome as his grandfather’
d. No era muy alto para ser un hombre
‘He wasn’t very tall for a man’
Table 13. Descriptions of appearance
N
21
Female
12
Male
33
TOTAL
%
63.6
39.4
100.0
Women outnumber males in this category: 63.6% of the clauses that mention
appearance include a female-gendered NP. Interestingly, we see that the distribution is
reversed in this category. Whereas the overall distribution of female- and male-gendered
NPs is 40% and 60%, respectively, in the category of appearance we see that males
-20-
account for 40% and females 60%. Thus, women are overrepresented when it comes to
describing appearance.
4.3.5 Romance
Following Macaulay and Brice (1997), lexical choice in reference to romance was
also examined. The corpus presents 32 clauses that portray a participant in a romantic
activity, exemplified in (10). For sentences in which the gender of all participants
involved in the romantic activity was explicit, these are all heterosexual relationships.
Most of the participants involved are objects of affection (n = 27). Table 14 below
presents the results of the analysis.
(10)
Romantic activity
a. Está loco por que venga su novia
‘He is crazy for his girlfriend to arrive’
b. Se desvivía por estar con ella
‘He goes out of his way to be with her’
c. Y es inútil que Clara me interrogue sobre los hombres que he amado, aunque
han sido bastantes, y aunque a algunos –por lo menos uno- debí sin duda
amarlos mucho.
‘And it is useless that Clara interrogates me about the men that I have loved, even
though they have been many, and even though I have no doubt loved them very
much some of them –at least one’.
Table 14. Romantic activity
Female
Object of
affection
“Subject” of
affection
TOTAL
Male
TOTAL
N
%
N
%
16
59.3
11
40.7
27
1
20.0
4
80.0
5
17
15
32
The results show that women are the objects of affection more often than men.
Women are represented as loved and as driving men crazy. As for the tokens with a
participant being the “subject” of affection, even though there are very few tokens, an
interesting trend is observed. Of the 5 sentences that include a “subject” of affection three
of them are romantic situations that include flirting, cheating, and lying. The only female
“subject” flirts, and males cheat and lie. These three sentences are presented below, in
(11).
(11)
“Subjects” of affection
a. —¿Así que encontraste a Neno acostado con tu mujer?
‘—So you found Neno in bed with your wife?’
b. Se dejarían despellejar antes que hacer traición al galán que las engatusa
‘Theyfem would let themselves be heavily criticized/torn apart before betraying
the ladies’ man that tricks them’
c. Se puso a coquetear con quienes la festejaban
‘She started flirting with those who were wooing her’
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Due to low token count in some cells, it was not possible to run chi-square tests on
this subset of the data.
4.3.6 Intellectual activity
Previous research (Macaulay & Brice, 1997; Porreca 1984) and the analysis of
Experiencer presented above show that intellectual activity is part of the male domain.
For this reason, how each gender is involved in different types of intellectual activity was
analyzed, following the methodology of Macaulay and Brice (1997). In their article, they
count the number of times that each gender is involved in four types of intellectual
activity. Macaulay and Brice (1997) explain them as follows:
Read and Write include sentences which use these verbs explicitly, as well as
sentences in which the activity described implies that an argument (usually the
subject) has the ability to read or write (this includes e.g. finish (a book), answer (a
letter)). Book indicates sentences in which a book is involved, excluding reading and
writing books. The majority of these sentences involve giving and receiving books
(one of the most common activities in syntactic examples, for some reason). School
includes various types of educational activity, such as study, be a student, and go to
college. Finally, Other contains such states and activities as speak a foreign
language, understand, prove, etc. (p. 808)
In this paper, an additional category was added, which is labeled as “Think”. In
Macaulay and Brice (1997) this category would fall in the “Other” category. However, it
was decided to create this new category because of the high number of tokens of
activities such as pensar ‘to think’, opinar ‘to opine’, and entender ‘to understand’. Table
15 presents the results and in (12) examples are provided. The data presents 133 instances
of intellectual activity.
Table 15. Intellectual activity
Read
Write
Book
School
Think
Other
TOTAL
(12)
Female
N
%
2
33.3
1
6.7
0
0.0
6
23.1
21
30.0
2
14.3
30
24.1
Male
N
4
14
2
20
49
12
96
Think
a. Vi que mi hijo no me comprendía
‘I saw my son did not understand me’
b. Él tiene distinta opinión que yo sobre ese asunto
‘He has a different opinion than me on that issue’
c. Sensatamente no lo oí razonar nunca.
‘I didn’t hear him reason sensibly’
-22-
%
67.7
93.3
100.0
76.9
70.0
85.7
75.9
TOTAL
6
15
2
29
73
14
133
Read
d. Ese periódico es leído por {mucha gente ~ mi amigo Carlos}
‘That newspaper is read by {a lot of people ~ my friend Carlos}’
e. Lázaro e Inés recibieron la misma carta
‘Lázaro and Inés received the same letter’
School
f. Estudian más las mujeres que los hombres en esa Facultad
‘Women study more than men in this School’
g. Con todas las noches que se pasó preparando el examen, el muchacho reprobó
matemáticas
‘Despite all the nights he spent preparing for the exam, the young boy failed
math’
Write
h. El autor no profundiza nada en ese asunto
‘The writer does go in depth at all on that issue’
i. Le escribe a un amigo, si no íntimo, bastante cercano
‘He writes to a friend, if not personal, rather close’
Table 15 shows a clear imbalance between males and females. Males are
responsible for 75.9% of all intellectual activities in the corpus, and in every category,
they surpass women with ease. The fact that for intellectual activity women constitute
24.1% and men 75.9% shows that the representation of genders in intellectual activities
does not follow the overall trend of the corpus of 40% female-60% male. As a result of
this distribution, women are especially underrepresented in this category. These results
present men as more engaged in intellectual activities than women. The portrayal with
which readers are left is one where men are the intellectual gender.
Given that in some categories there is a low cell count, in order to run a chi-square
test it was decided to collapse Read, Write and Book into a new category labeled “Read
and Write”. The percentage of gendered NPs per intellectual category does not differ by
gender, χ2 (3, N = 133) = 3.62, p = .305, Cramer’s V = .165.
4.4 Literary examples
Finally, as explained in the methodology section, this textbook includes constructed
examples, as well as examples from journals and literary works. The examples from
journals identify the date in which they were published and the journal that contained
them. For the literary citations, the author and text are identified, and thus the gender of
writer can be identified. A higher contribution of examples by male authors would show
another side to gender bias. For this reason, it was decided to examine the gender of the
writers that contribute example sentences to the corpus of analysis. It is not possible to
examine the journal examples, given that they do not include information about the
writer.
It is a fact that historically women were not part of the social class that was
educated or that had their works published. However, even though today women may still
lag behind in number of publications, they are very much part of the publishing world.
Nowadays, there is availability of materials written by women to choose from. While we
cannot change the past, we do have a choice as to who we choose to incorporate and who
we choose to exclude. For this reason, any imbalance between male and female writers
-23-
reflects a gender bias. There are a total of 179 sentences that come from literary works in
the corpus under analysis. These sentences contribute with 347 tokens. Table 16 below
presents the count of sentences and tokens per gender of the writer.
Table 16. Examples and tokens by gender of the writer
Female writers
Male writers
N
%
N
%
35
19.5
144
80.5
Examples
78
22.5
269
77.5
Tokens
TOTAL
179
347
As Table 16 shows, male writers contribute with sentences four times more often
than female writers, and three times more tokens. This, in conjunction with the results of
intellectual activity presented in Table 11, shows that writing, as a profession, is
represented as not being a woman’s place. As a result, in the corpus under analysis,
women are underrepresented. Thus, contributions of women to Literature in Spanish and
to the Spanish language in general appear undermined.
Another way to look at the subset of examples that come from literary works is to
examine whether female and male writers contribute more tokens of a specific gender.
That is, whether male writers contribute with more tokens of male-gendered NPs and
women with more tokens of female-gendered NPs, or vice versa. Table 17 below presents
the distributions of male- and female-gendered tokens according to the gender of the
writer.
Table 17. Tokens by gender of the writer
Female writers
N
%
47
60.3
Female tokens
31
39.7
Male tokens
78
100.0
TOTAL
Male writers
N
%
101
37.5
168
62.5
269
100.0
Table 17 shows that women writers contribute with more female- than malegendered NPs. For men writers, the opposite trend holds. Male writers contribute with
more male than female tokens. Thus, we see that the distributions are inverted. A chisquare analysis shows that distribution of gendered-NPs differs significantly by gender of
the writer, χ2 (1, N = 347) = 12.750, p = .000, Cramer’s V = .192. This suggests that
women specialize in writing about women, and men about men.
4.5 Summary of results
Table 18 below presents an overview of the results before moving forward with the
discussion. Given that this study draws from previous research by Monica Macaulay and
Colleen Brice (mostly Macaulay & Brice, 1997), the summary includes their findings to
compare with the results presented here.
-24-
Table 18. Summary of the results
The present study
Overall distribution Male-gendered NPs outnumber
female-gendered NPs
Grammatical Males tend to outnumber
function females in every category.
However,
females
are
overrepresented in the category
of direct object.
Thematic role Males outnumber females,
except in the category of
comitative.
For patient, women undergo an
action more often than men do.
Male referents, on the other
hand, are the object of
description more often than
females are.
For experiencers, women are
less intellectual than men, yet
as emotional.
Types of NP Women remain anonymous
more often than men do, and
they are more likely to be
represented as children than
men.
Employment Males have jobs four times
more often than women and
they have a wide variety of
occupations. Women are either
part of royalty or their
employment is not specified.
Violence and
criminal activity
Appearance
Romance
Macaulay and Brice 1997
Males are more frequent
than females.
Female-gendered
NPs
appear slightly more often
as the direct object, while
male-gendered NPs appear
with greater frequency as
the subject.
Males outnumber females
in every category, except in
Recipient. The Experiencer
category
reveals
that
women are portrayed as
emotional and males as
intellectual.
Women
are
defined
through their relationship
with men. Additionally,
‘men’ appears 36 times
more often than ‘woman’.
Males have occupations
more often than females.
The employment of women
is either in teaching or it is
unspecified. Males have a
wide
variety
of
occupations.
Males are perpetrators and Males outnumber females
victims of violence and both as the perpetrators and
criminal activity more often victims of violence.
than females. Also, males are
labeled as criminals, whereas
women are not.
Women outnumber males in Females NPs predominate
this category.
in this category.
Women are the objects of In positive situations (e.g.
affection more often than men. to love, to be married),
Males are the subject of females outnumber males.
romance
with
greater In negative situations (e.g.
to divorce, to stand
frequency.
[someone] up), males are
more
frequent
than
females.
-25-
Intellectual activity Men predominate in the domain Males are engaged
of intellectual activity.
intellectual activity.
Literary examples Male writers contribute with n/a
more examples than female
writers. Additionally, women
writers contribute with more
female- than male-gendered
NPs. Men writers present the
opposite trend.
in
5. Discussion
Overall, the results of the study provide evidence that the Manual is biased in favor
of males in a number of ways. Firstly, male participants outnumber female participants.
In the corpus under analysis, the ratio of male-female is 1.5:1. In other words, for every
female-gendered NP, there are 1.5 male-gendered NPs. The results also show that in the
domain of employment, women are represented as occupying a subordinated place. The
fact that in this corpus women’s employment is frequently not overtly expressed suggests
that their employment is not a worthwhile enterprise to represent. Any female social
status is inherited, which means that women are not portrayed as acquiring their social
status through their own efforts. Additionally, we find that male writers contribute with
triple the amount of example tokens, and that female writers specialize in femalegendered NPs while male writers in male-gendered NPs. These trends find statistical
confirmation in chi-square analyses. All in all, Macaulay and Brice’s (1997, p. 815)
statement that “females are simply not significant actors in the world constructed in most
corpora of example sentences” holds true for this particular textbook as well.
However, there are a number of distributions that are not statistically significant, or
for which the token count per cell is low to run chi-square analysis. Nevertheless, the
analysis reveals trends that also point in the direction of a gender bias. Specifically, an
examination of the distribution of male- and female-gendered NPs in this corpus shows
that (a) women undergo an action more often than men, (b) women remain anonymous
and are characterized as children with greater frequency than men, (c) references to
appearance are more frequent with females than with males, (d) women tend to be the
object of affection, (e) males are overrepresented in intellectual activities, and (f) males
are portrayed as violent and criminal. There is one category for which the present study
finds a trend opposite to what was expected in light of previous literature: femalegendered NPs are as emotional as male-gendered NPs.
In comparison to previous research (Hellinger, 1980; Macaulay & Brice, 1994,
1997; Porreca, 1985; among others), the findings in this study mirror those reported
earlier. In a time when issues of gender equality are very much at the forefront of social
conquests, the results in this study are especially alarming. More than ten years have
passed since Macaulay and Brice (1994, 1997) presented their results for English syntax
textbooks, and approximately 30 since Hellinger (1980) and Porreca (1985).
Additionally, compared to the results of a more recent study, such as Lee and Collins
(2009), who find a ratio of men to women of 1.35:1, the ratio found in this study (1.5:1)
is higher. Thus, it is clear that there is room for improvement and that there is a place for
non-sexist language guidelines.
-26-
It is worthy of notice that women are not only underrepresented in the Manual, but
also in the RAE itself. Along its history, many women have been admitted to the RAE,
however only as honorary members. Since its foundation in 1713, the list of actual
members (i.e. academic numeraries) has included only nine women. The first woman to
be elected as a member was Carmen Conde, in 1978. Since then, the other female
members were elected in 1983 (Elena Quiroga), 1998 (Ana María Matute), 2002 (Carmen
Iglesias), 2003 (Margarita Salas), 2010 (Soledad Puértolas), 2011 (Inés Fernández
Ordóñez), 2013 (Carme Riera) and 2014 (Aurora Egido). Nowadays, of the 42 members,
seven are women, which places the male-female ratio in RAE at 6:1. That is, for every six
males there is one woman. It is true that in the last years there has been an effort to
overturn these distributions. Nevertheless, it is true that the trends found in the Manual
are conservative when compared to those of the RAE itself.
It could be argued that the results in this study are not really the result of a bias, but
rather the result of traditional practices. For example, writing and government have
traditionally been male domains in Western cultures, and Spain is no stranger to this
trend. Consequently, the writers of the Manual unknowingly or unintentionally produced
a biased corpus as a result of repetition that enforces the androcentric worldview.
However, as Macaulay and Brice (1997, p. 817) state, “This is the kind of problem that
guidelines for nonsexist usage can most efficiently help authors to overcome, and, for
many people, awareness is all that is needed.” In the words of Nuria Manzano, Equality
Secretary for UGT-Madrid (cited in Manrique Sabogal, 2013), Cuando las tradiciones
son injustas hay que cambiarlas “When traditions are unfair, we have to change them”,
which is why language guidelines are all the more necessary.
Despite recognizing their laudable aims, the report denounces non-sexist language
guidelines for not consulting linguists at RAE. However, the present study shows that the
RAE produced a pedagogical grammar in which women are underrepresented and
mischaracterized. This is especially worrisome after Bosque’s (2012) call for increased
involvement of secondary education in issues of language sexism in the RAE report.
Furthermore, the present study offers additional evidence that there is an array of
linguistic devices that perpetuate sexism in language, and not just the generic masculine.
The institutional androcentric worldview that advocates the continued use of the generic
masculine becomes clear when we look into the syntactic and semantic make-up of the
examples collected in the Manual, as well as the lexical choices. Higher frequencies lead
to normativity. Thus, the results reported here provide grounds to support the existence of
non-sexist language use guidelines.
I do not mean to claim that non-sexist language guidelines are bulletproof. It is not
my aim to offer a blind or unfounded defense. That is, I am not saying that the guidelines
under scrutiny should not be evaluated or even criticized. What I do mean to demonstrate
is that our criticism of these materials should not be one that dismisses them altogether.
Instead, we should aim to improve them. As Pauwels (2003, p. 556) states, the
application of gender neutralization and gender specification, the two mechanisms
proposed in the non-sexist language guidelines criticized at length by Bosque (2012), are
confined to the word level. However, the studies by Macaulay and Brice (1994, 1997)
and the present study show that we can find a gender bias when we look above the word
level as well. The issue of linguistic sexism and women’s visibility is not just a matter of
labeling. Thus, our debate of language sexism should extend beyond the generic
-27-
masculine and non-sexist language guidelines should be stretched to incorporate the
syntactic and discourse levels.
The results presented here reinforce Macaulay and Brice’s (1997) warning as they
close their article:
Our results suggest that the guidelines be revised to specify more fully the
range of constructions, patterns, and so on that perpetuate sexism in example
sentences. It may be difficult for writers to avoid constructing sexist examples if
they are unclear about what counts as sexist usage. (p. 822)
Using or not using the generic masculine is not the only locus for sexism. Thus, as
long as we just keep discussing whether to use it or to avoid it, we will remain unclear as
to what constitutes sexist language. This study, and the research beforehand,
demonstrates that there is a whole spectrum of other sexist usages. As I hope to have
shown, non-sexist language guidelines are not all that unnecessary, as the report written
by Ignacio Bosque presents it to be. Non-sexist language guidelines contribute to dealing
with issues of gender equity in two ways. First, non-sexist language guidelines can offer
tools to present a more balanced portrayal of women and men, by making women more
visible while reducing biases and the use of stereotypes. Second, non-sexist language
guidelines contribute to the process of showcasing gender equity by stressing and
increasing awareness of the issue. Therefore, we have a responsibility to continue to
research issues of language and gender equality, to uncover hidden loci for sexist usages
and linguistic attitudes, and to create conscientious non-sexist language guidelines.
6. Final remarks
The present study shows evidence of a gender bias in pedagogical materials
published by RAE. Thus, non-sexist language guidelines would aid in how men and
women are represented in published language materials. The aim of this study was to
bring attention to this fact, in the hopes of broadening the debate around language sexism
and the Spanish language.
Future research could compare the textbook under analysis with other materials
published by RAE. The analyzed corpus is an abridged version of a larger work. As such,
it would be advisable to compare it with the unabridged version to verify if the trend
identified here obtains. Additionally, comparing with previous editions of the grammar
book would give us an idea of whether and how gender representations have changed
over time.
Another encouraged avenue of research includes investigating the Spanish generic
masculine. Proponents of the continued use of the generic masculine argue on the
grounds that women do not feel excluded, recognizing that users of the generic masculine
do not purposely intend to exclude them. However, the Spanish generic masculine
deserves a thorough examination that includes not only if and how women perceive
themselves as excluded, but also how the community at large, regardless of gender, uses
and perceives the generic masculine.
-28-
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