James Chester at the University of Tasmania recently contacted Community Notes to outline how his colleague and Senior Leader within the Student Success program at UTAS, Caylee Tierney, has developed content for Leaders that explains the benefits of using gender neutral and inclusive language. James reports that Caylee’s work has found traction within and beyond the Student Success team. The UTAS Student Success team acknowledges that “change takes time and mistakes and missteps may occur…the most important thing is that we continue to be open to change and work towards normalising this use of language.”

Here is Caylee’s fantastic outline of the importance gender neutral and inclusive language, and

how university staff can work to be more inclusive:

Gender Neutral Language

We are working towards using gender neutral/inclusive language in our content and communications about students.

This is something we can all do by paying attention to the

gendered words we use in our own writing.

In our work, places for improvement might include using pronouns like ‘he’ or ‘she’ in a private note. A more gender neutral word to use

in this case would be ‘they’ – this does not give an impression of someone being male or female. While some might say that ‘they’ is ungrammatical as it is a plural, ‘they’ is used in many situations as a neutral singular word in modern English, and no one will be confused by this usage. If you prefer to avoid ‘they’, ‘this student’ is another alternative that often suits in our work.

Why is gender neutral language important?                                                             

Using gender neutral/inclusive language is good practice in a professional capacity to demonstrate respect and inclusivity, and to assure we’re not making assumptions that will make others feel marginalised or unvalued. It’s not a big change for us to make, but it can go a big way to making others feel welcome and supported, which is a significant part of Student Success’s role.

Avoiding assumptions about gender identity is also a good practice to consider beyond this role – it’s easy to make assumptions based on a name or a person’s sex, but these indicators are not always accurate.

In discussing the use of gender neutral terms beyond pronouns (for example, ‘humankind’ rather than ‘mankind’), Dr Lucy Tatman says, ‘It’s important to use gender-neutral terms whenever you are referring to something that includes both men and women or could be done by either a man or a woman because it is the most accurate description of reality’ (see here for more).

How can we be more inclusive?

We can be more inclusive/neutral in our use of language by avoiding words like ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘him’ and ‘her’ in favour of ‘they’, ‘their’, ‘this student’ etc., as mentioned above. If you have trouble with those options ‘he or she’ or ‘s/he’ are alternatives.

We can also consider the blanket terms we use, like ‘man’ or ‘guys’ when we mean ‘person’ or ‘everyone’, to avoid biases towards a certain gender.

To read more, please see: the Victorian Government on inclusive language or this website.

 

Examples:

·         Hi CALE CIOs, could you please help this student with their enrolment questions. Thanks, Arushi

·         Hi Ruby, please call Jack back at 3pm. Thanks, Arushi

·         Hi Cassendra, could you please call this student? They might need to speak to a CIO, but we can double check.