Gender neutrality in Spanish
has proposed gender neutrality in languages with grammatical gender, such as Spanish. Grammatical gender in Spanish refers to how Spanish nouns are categorized as either masculine or feminine. As in other Romance languages—such as Portuguese, to which Spanish is very similar—a group of both males and females, or someone of unknown gender, is usually referred to by the masculine form of a nouns and or pronoun. Advocates of gender-neutral language modification consider this to be sexist, and favor new ways of writing and speaking. Activists against sexism in language are also concerned about words whose feminine form has a different meaning.
Grammatical background
In Spanish, the masculine is often marked with the suffix -o, and it is generally easy to make a feminine noun from a masculine one by changing the ending from o to a: cirujano, cirujana ; médico, médica If the masculine version ends with a consonant, the feminine is typically formed by adding an -a to it as well: el doctor, la doctora. However, not all nouns ending in -o are masculine, and not all nouns ending in -a are feminine:- Singular nouns ending in -o or -a are epicene in some cases: testigo.
- Nouns with the epicene ending -ista, such as dentista, ciclista, turista, especialista are almost always invariable. One exception is modisto, which was created as a counterpart to modista.
- Some nouns ending in -a refer only to men: cura ends in -a but is grammatically masculine, for a profession held in Roman Catholic tradition only by men.
Social aspects
Activists against sexism in language are also concerned about words whose feminine form has a different meaning:- An ambiguous case is "secretary": a secretaria is an attendant for her boss or a typist, usually female, while a secretario is a high-rank position—as in secretario general del partido comunista, "secretary general of the communist party"—usually held by males. With the access of women to positions labelled as "secretary general" or similar, some have chosen to use the masculine gendered la secretario and others have to clarify that secretaria is an executive position, not a subordinate one.
- Another example is hombre público and mujer pública.
Reform proposals
A list of proposals for reducing the generic masculine follows, adapted from the Asociación de Estudios Históricos sobre la Mujer's 2002 book, Manual de Lenguaje Administrativo no Sexista:
| Method | Standard Spanish | Reformed Spanish | Notes |
| Collective noun | los trabajadores | la plantilla de la empresa | "the staff of the company" instead of "the workers" |
| Periphrasis | los políticos | la clase política | "the political class" instead of "the politicians" |
| Metonymy | los gerentes | la gerencia | "the management" instead of "the directors" |
| Splitting | los trabajadores | los trabajadores y las trabajadoras | literally "the workers and the workers" |
| Slash | impreso para el cliente | impreso para el/la cliente/a | literally "printed for the client/the client" |
| Apposition | El objetivo es proporcionar a los jóvenes una formación plena. | El objetivo es proporcionar a los jóvenes, de uno y otro sexo, una formación plena. | literally "The objective is to provide the youth, of one and the other sex, a full training." |
| Drop articles | Podrán optar al concurso los profesionales con experiencia. | Podrán optar al concurso profesionales con experiencia. | literally "Professionals with experience can apply for the competition." |
| Switch determiner | todos los miembros recibirán | cada miembro recibirá | "each member will receive" instead of "all of the members will receive". |
| Impersonal passive voice | Los jueces decidirán | Se decidirá judicialmente | "It will be decided judicially" instead of "The judges will decide" |
| Drop subject | Si el usuario decide abandonar la zona antes de lo estipulado, debe advertirlo. | Si decide abandonar la zona antes de lo estipulado, debe advertirlo | literally "If it is decided to leave the zone before the stipulated time, notice should be given" |
| Impersonal verb | Es necesario que el usuario preste más atención | Es necesario prestar más atención | literally "it is necessary to pay more attention" |
Pronouns
Some Spanish-speaking people advocate for the use of elle/elles. Its former use is similar to Spanish lo and ello, which cannot be used for objects, non-human living beings or people, as there are no neuter nouns or descriptive adjectives in Ibero-Romance languages. Despite this, some still employ this pronoun in a gender-neutral personal third pronoun fashion, even if not allowed according to the historical use and etymology of the now-defunct word.Replacing -a and -o
There are several proposed word endings that combine the masculine -o and the feminine -a.Many people prefer use of the slash, as in: el/la candidato/a.
Writing
Pronunciation
Opponents of the use of the -a/-o combination '@' as a letter in these languages feel that the character is a kind of political correctness. Many also raise the question of how these new words are to be pronounced. Proposals exist, though, such as those made by PCIG.According to the PCIG proposal, Spanish speakers can pronounce the at-sign using the phoneme /ɔ/ and the ligature with /ɛ/.
However, some Spanish speakers are concerned that this proposal is unlikely to be adopted, since the Spanish language does not distinguish and from and respectively, and most of its speakers would therefore not even notice a difference in pronunciation.
The Diccionario panhispánico de dudas, published by the Real Academia Española, says that the at-sign is not a linguistic sign, and should not be used from a normative point of view.
The phoneme is between the characteristic of feminine nouns and the characteristic of masculine nouns in the scale of vowel height, which can be characterized symbolic of gender inclusion. Analogously, the "gender-inclusive" is intermediate step between the "feminine" and the "masculine".
Political use
Some politicians have begun to avoid perceived sexism in their speeches; the Mexican president Vicente Fox Quesada, for example, commonly repeated gendered nouns in their masculine and feminine versions. This way of speaking is subject to parodies where new words with the opposite ending are created for the sole purpose of contrasting with the gendered word traditionally used for the common case.There remain a few cases where the appropriate gender is uncertain:
- used to be "the president's wife", but there have been several female presidents in Latin American republics, and in modern usage the word generally means a female president. Some feel that ' can be treated as invariable, as it ends in -ente, but others prefer to use a different feminine form. The usage is inconsistent: is often used for female customers, but *cantanta is never used for female singers.
- El . Since la policía means "the police force", the only productive feminine counterpart is la mujer policía. A similar case is '.
- . Many judges in Spanish-speaking countries are women. Since the ending of juez is uncommon in Spanish, some prefer being called la juez while others have created the neologism.