IGALA 9

Time and Transition: Gender, sexuality discourse and

language
City University of Hong Kong - May 19 -21, 2016

Women, work and gender-fair

language
in Italian job ads:
a stagnation rather than a
transition
Chiara Nardone
Chiara.nardone2@unibo.it
University of Bologna,
Department of Interpretation and Translation

Ph.D Project
Analysis
of
gender-fair
and
gender-biased
forms
in
two
comparable corpora of Italian and
German job ads.
Corpus-assisted discourse study
on language and gender in
Italian and German newspapers.

Gender, language and job

ads

Since the 1970s the need of using

gender-fair language in job ads
has been highlighted in order to
guarantee women more visibility
and better opportunities
in
the
"sex bias in the content
of a job advertisement
labour market.
does serve to aid and
abet discrimination by
discouraging
both men and women
from applying for
"opposite-sex" jobs"
(Bem & Bem, 1973).

Gender and language in

Italy
Alma
Sabatini,
guidelines.

1987,

first

For over 20 years interest in this

issue on the part of academia,
institutions and media has been
scarce and inconsistent.

Gender and language in

Italy
In recent years the subject has gained a
new
visibility among academia, institutions and
media.

Gender and language in

Italian

Italian is a language with

grammatical gender;
nouns,
adjectives,
past
participles, articles, pronouns and
articulated prepositions are either
masculine or feminine;
epicene nouns are not genderspecific;
the grammatical gender of the
noun (generally) agrees with the
gender of the referent.

Gender and language in

Italian
Masculine forms are commonly used
to refer both only to men and to mixed
groups.
Giovani avvocati / Young male lawyers
male (?) laywers

Giovani avvocati / Young

Gender and language in

Italian
Guidelines on gender-fair language
recommend to avoid the generic
masculine forms when referring to
mixed groups.
Psycholinguistic studies have
demonstrated that these forms bias
gender representations in a way that is
discriminatory to women. (Gygax et al.,
2008)

Gender and language in

Italian

Different strategies have been proposed

to avoid the generic masculine:
double forms:
- e.g. i fratelli e le sorelle, tutti/e i/le
consiglieri/e;
neutral and epicene forms:
- e.g. studenti, le persone;
other strategies:
- e.g. ingegnere (m/f), presidenza.

Gender and language in

Italian
Psycholinguistic
studies
have
demonstrated that these strategies
are not equally effective in making
women visible.
Gender equality and symmetry are
achieved to the extent that the
linguistic forms used are equal and
symmetrical. (Horvath and Sczesny,
2015).

Gender and language in

Italy
Regulations
against
the
discriminatory use of language in
job ads have been approved in
1977, in 1991 and in 2006;
they do not provide gender-fair
guidelines;
the laws approved in 1991 and in
2006
only
recommend
the
introduction of the statement
dell'uno o dell'altro sesso (of
both sexes).

Research questions
Despite the guidelines that have
been published since 1987 and
the regulations that have come
into force in Italy since 1977, to
what
extent
discriminatory
language in job ads is employed
by companies?

Womens employment rate

Source: EUROSTAT, http://goo.gl/cc6fKO

Research questions
As Italy was and still is lagging
behind other European countries
in terms of women's employment
rate, is it possible that Italy is also
lagging behind these countries
concerning the use of gender-fair
language in job ads?

Methodology: corpus size

Number
Tokens
of job ads

Types

486

97,872

116,067

Methodology: quantitative
analysis
A quantitative analysis has been
carried out on:
double
forms:
e.g.
il/la
tirocinante, il/la candidato/a, i
candidati e le candidate;
epicene
forms:
e.g.
responsabile, dipendente;
feminine
forms:
e.g.
la
commessa;
other
strategies:
e.g.
ingegnere+ m/f, di entrambi i

Results: double forms

100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%

Number of job ads

without double form(s)
Number of job ads with
double form(s)

Results: feminine forms

Feminine form

English
translation

Frequency

Commessa

Female shop
assistant

Modellista

Female designer

Medico
ginecologa

Male doctor
female
gynaecologist

Results: other strategies

100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%

job ads without gender-fair

strategy
job ads with gender-fair
strategy

Overview of the results

Job ads with

gender-fair
strategies

Conclusions
51,2% of the job ads contain at
least one gender-fair strategy
19,3% of the job ads contain the
equal opportunity statement
7,4% of job ads contain at least
one symmetrical form
A stagnation rather than a
transition is evident

Further perspectives
Although 96 per cent of the job
advertisements in the corpus are
directed at both male and female
applicants, in most cases the
gender bias has been removed by
means of the minimalist strategy
(h/f). (Lipovsky, 2014)

Further perspectives

(Bengoechea & Simn, 2011)

Further perspectives
As Italy is still lagging behind
other European countries in terms
of women's employment rate,
similarly Italy is also lagging
behind these countries in the use
of gender-fair language in job ads,
as shown by the comparison of
these results with those of the
studies carried out by Lipovsky
(2014)
for
French,
and
Bengoechea & Simn (2011) for

References
AA.VV. (2008). La neutralit di genere nel linguaggio usato al Parlamento Europeo.
Bruxelles: Parlamento Europeo.
Bem, S. and D. J. Bem (1973). "Does sex-biased job advertising aid and abet sex
discrimination?". Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 3(1), 618.

Bengoechea, M. and J. Simon (2011). "La reforma feminista del espaol en los anuncios de
prensa: un estudio basado en corpus". In M. L. Carri Pastor and M. A. Candel Mora (2011).
507516.

Formato, F. (2014). Language use and gender in the Italian parliament. Ph.D. Thesis,
Lancaster University.
Gygax, P. et al. (2008). "Generically intended, but specifically interpreted: When
beauticians,
musicians, and mechanics are all men". Language and Cognitive Processes. 23(3): 464-485.

Horvath, L. K. and S. Sczesny (2015). "Reducing womens lack of fit with leadership
positions? Effects of the wording of job advertisements".European Journal of Work and
Organizational Psychology, 1-13.
Kilgariff, Adam, et al. (2014). The Sketch Engine: ten years on. Lexicography, 1-30.
Lipovsky, C. (2014). "Gender-specification and occupational nouns: has linguistic change
occurred in job advertisements since the French feminisation reforms?". Gender and
Language, 8.3, 361-392.

References
Robustelli, C. (2012). Linee guida per luso del genere nel linguaggio amministrativo.
Firenze: Comune di Firenze
Sabatini, A. (1987). Raccomandazioni per un Uso Non Sessista Della Lingua Italiana.
Roma: Commissione nazionale per la realizzazione della parit tra uomo e donna,
Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri.

Legge n. 903/1977, art.1. Parit di trattamento tra uomini e donne in materia di lavoro.
09/12/1977. http://www.normattiva.it/uri-res/N2Ls?urn:nir:stato:legge:1977-12-09;903
Legge 125/1991, art. 4, c.3. Azioni positive per la realizzazione della parit uomo-donna nel
lavoro. 10/04/1991. http://
www.normattiva.it/uri-res/N2Ls?urn:nir:stato:legge:1991-04-10;125
Decreto Legislativo 11 aprile 2006, n. 198. Codice delle pari opportunit tra uomo e donna,
a norma dell'articolo 6 della legge 28 novembre 2005, n. 246. 11/04/2006. http://
www.camera.it/parlam/leggi/deleghe/06198dl.htm

IGALA 9
Time and Transition: Gender, sexuality discourse and
language
City University of Hong Kong - May 19 -21, 2016

Thank you for your

attention

Chiara Nardone
Chiara.nardone2@unibo.it
University of Bologna, Department of Interpretation and Translation