Danish dictionary goes under major review to remove gender stereotypes

The Danish language officially does not carry a male equivalent for the term “career woman” or a female equivalent term for the male-gendered noun “financier”.

However, after carrying out a major review of all keywords that end with -mand (man), -kvinde (woman) and -person (person), soon the terms finanskvinde (female financier) and karrieremand (career man), along with many new gender-neutral terms will now be officially joining the ranks of the Danish spelling dictionary, the Retskrivningsordbogen.

The Dansk Sprognævn (the Danish Language Council) is carrying out the first review in 12 years in which it has embarked on creating a new edition which is focused on gender equality and making words and descriptions less stereotyped and more gender neutral.

The council is also analysing the use of he, she, his and hers in the example phrases of the dictionary. The new edition, which will be published next year, has added the female version of the word afholdsmand, the word which exists for someone who will abstain from drinking alcohol. The word has a male-gendered suffix and the female version will be termed 'afholdskvinde'.

The Dutch word 'finansmand' for financier also has a female equivalent, which has been termed finanskvinde. Also, the gendered word for trader, handelsmand, was joined by handelskvinde, which has been translated as female trader.

The gendered example phrases which will be chucked out from the dictionary's new edition are pigerne fjantede rundt (the girls fooled around) and han er anklaget for uagtsomt manddrab (he is accused of negligent manslaughter).

Current dictionary scanned for sexist inclusions and omissions

Senior researcher at the language council Margrethe Heidemann Andersen was among the three editors who scanned the current dictionary to look for sexist inclusions and omissions.

“We have made lists of all words that end in -man and -woman and then reviewed them one by one to see if we should create a counterpart with the endings -woman, -man or possibly -person,” she said while speaking to the Danish public broadcaster DR.

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“We have also looked through the text examples in the dictionary to ensure that they do not give a stereotypical representation of the genders,” she added.

An exact figure of the number of sentences and words which has been analysed or changed has not been provided by Heidemann Andersen, but she stated that there will never be as many words which end with -woman as compared to those which end with -man.

She said that some words ending in -mand do not refer to a person hence it becomes pointless to add a female equivalent of those terms. “When we add a new word, we have to get the argument right, and the frequency matters a lot,” stated Heidemann Andersen.

“There are some people who have grown up with a language who think we are changing too much, and do not think we need a word like ‘female financier’. Identity and gender provoke stronger emotions than changes to grammar rules,” she stated.

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