Scientific research supports gender

Susanne Brunner wants to end “artificial language with political messages” through her Gender Stars initiative. She believes that language cannot promote equality. But it’s not evidence-based – on the contrary.

follow me

“Language contributes nothing to equality,” Susanne Brunner said in an interview with NZZ in autumn 2022. She just launched the initiative “Goodbye Gender Stars!” The move aims to ban inclusive communication by the Zurich city council.

Their main argument is that cities should not misuse language as a political tool in gender struggles. Gender stars are grammatically incorrect, unintelligible, and unnecessary. Even better is the universal masculine, where the male form represents all genders:

She said she wanted to use the move to protect herself from the “artificial language” of the “language police”. She has recommended grammar tutoring to non-binary people in various media interviews.

At the same time, it's clear: The people of Zurich are apparently not bothered enough by these special characters, often described as troublesome, and voted in favor of inclusive language regulations in last Sunday's vote. Various scientific studies in psychology and linguistics prove this to be true.

Study confirms gender celebrities have beneficial effects

An interdisciplinary team of researchers from several European universities recently demonstrated once again that people don't think of women when they read generic masculine names.

Researchers asked more than 2,600 people to name up to three celebrities from the fields of music, sport, politics, television, literature and acting. They divided participants into five groups and asked:

They then compared the number of mentions made by women and men. It turns out that the control group with gender-neutral names and the group with generic masculine names named men the most. However, when they were asked to use gender-appropriate wording, they mentioned women significantly more often. What's more: When people use the generic masculine term, they think of women even less than when they don't mention gender at all.

In their conclusion, the study authors make a clear plea: Official recommendations for the use of gender-appropriate language should be based on scientific findings.

Further research sheds light on inclusive language

The study's findings are not alone. Swiss psycholinguist Pascal Gygax also found in his research that when we read masculine terms, we are more likely to think of men.

Current research measuring electrical activity in the brain shows that the brain must expend more energy to imagine a woman in a group of doctors than simply interpreting “doctors” as a group of men.

According to Gygax, this can have far-reaching consequences. Male-dominated language use not only renders society as a whole invisible. Language also has a significant impact on how children imagine their future career options.

In November 2024, the psycholinguist received the Marcel Benoist Swiss Science Prize for his research, which is often regarded as the “Swiss Nobel Prize”.

If science has its role, the people of Zurich made the right decision. But inclusive language still faces difficulties in Switzerland, according to a representative survey by Tamedia.

According to this, more than 25% of the respondents want to be called male, more than half prefer to be called both genders, and only one fifth want to be called gender star.

An Apatosaurus skeleton more than 20 meters long was auctioned in France, with a transaction price of just over 4.4 million francs.

A collector acquired a dinosaur skeleton unearthed in the United States on Saturday, auction houses Collin du Bocage and Barbarossa said.