The Danish language does not officially carry a male equivalent for the (often pejorative) term “career woman” or a female equivalent for the male-gendered noun “financier”.
But after a major review of all keywords ending in -mand (man), -kvinde (woman) and -person (person), soon the terms karrieremand (career man) and finanskvinde (female financier) – as well as many new gender-neutral terms – will officially join the ranks of the Danish spelling dictionary, the Retskrivningsordbogen.
In its first review in 12 years, the Dansk Sprognævn (the Danish Language Council) has embarked on a new edition focusing on gender equality and making words and descriptions more gender neutral and less stereotyped. The council has also analysed the use of he, she, his and hers in the dictionary’s example phrases.
The new edition, to be published next year, adds to afholdsmand, the existing word for someone who abstains from drinking alcohol, which has a male-gendered suffix, a female version: afholdskvinde.
Financier, finansmand, now also has a female equivalent in the form of finanskvinde. And the gendered word for trader, handelsmand, is now joined by handelskvinde, which can be translated as female trader.
Among the gendered example phrases to be removed from the new edition of the dictionary are pigerne fjantede rundt (the girls fooled around) and han er anklaget for uagtsomt manddrab (he is accused of negligent manslaughter).
Margrethe Heidemann Andersen, a senior researcher at the language council, was one of three editors who combed through the current dictionary looking 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 told the Danish public broadcaster DR.
“We have also looked through the text examples in the dictionary to ensure that they do not give a stereotypical representation of the genders.”
Heidemann Andersen has not provided an exact figure for the number of words and sentences that have been analysed or changed, but she said there will never be as many words ending with -woman as there are -man. Some words, she said, ending in -mand do not refer to a person, which would make it pointless adding a female equivalent.
For example, nordmand, the word for a Norwegian, refers to a human being rather than a man. This is a word that will not be given a female equivalent.
The push for linguistic gender equality and gender neutrality should perhaps come as little surprise in a country with a female prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, but it is also in part driven by the UN’s global goals, which include ensuring equality for women by 2030.
Before the editors came up with recommendations, which they presented to an expert council of linguists, they assessed how widespread the words are in day-to-day use.
“When we add a new word, we have to get the argument right, and the frequency matters a lot,” said Heidemann Andersen.
Implementing changes can be fraught, though.
“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’,” she said. Identity and gender provoke stronger emotions than changes to grammar rules, she added.
But the linguistic changes are perhaps less progressive than those of Denmark’s Nordic neighbour, Sweden, which in 2015 made global headlines when it introduced a new gender-neutral pronoun to its official dictionary. The pronoun hen is a combination of han (he) and hon (she).
