Sara and Daryl Bem wrote one of the earliest scientific papers on the topic of gender equality and language back in 1973. In two studies, they examined the effects of gender-exclusive job advertisements and proved that women usually did not feel addressed by the generic masculine and therefore did not want to apply for the respective positions. Men were also reluctant to apply for jobs that were supposedly aimed at women^.2 Bem and Bem were not alone in their findings. In 1981, Anne Stericker carried out a comparable study and came to results that largely coincided with those of Bem and Bem. Stericker came to the conclusion that women in particular felt less addressed by male titles and pronouns in job advertisements, while she did not find similar effects in men^.3

In the late 1970s, the discourse on fair language gained momentum, particularly in feminist circles, and women such as Luise F. Pusch (linguist) in the spotlight. Her campaign against linguistic discrimination against women cost her her academic career at the time^.4

In the late 1990s, Irmen and Köhnke explicitly examined the psychological effect of the generic masculine for the first time. Their study developed into a basis on which many studies on gender-inclusive language are still based today^.5 These studies revealed that women are not always included when talking about doctors, students or educators. In various research studies, alternative forms of gendering were presented to the test subjects - the most frequently used were double pronouns, the internal I and the slash. One thing emerged in all studies: only when women are explicitly mentioned are they also mentally included^.6,7,8,9
Sabine Sczesny (social psychologist) in particular has achieved a high reputation in the field of gender studies through her numerous publications on gender-equitable language.

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² Bem, Sandra; Daryl Bem: Does Sex-biased Job Advertising "Aid and Abet" Sex Discrimination?, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Volume 3, Issue 1, Hoboken, Wiley Blackwell, 1973, pp. 6-18
³ Stericke, Anne: Does this "He or She" Business Really Make a Difference? The Effect of Masculine Pronouns as Generics on Job Attitudes, Sex Roles, vol. 7, Springer, 1981, pp. 637-641
⁴ Rinas, Jutta: "Der Kampf für Gender-Sprache hat sie die Karriere gekostet", Hannoversche Allgemeine, 2019
⁵ Irmen, Lisa; Köhncke, Astrid: "Zur Psychologie des 'generischen' Maskulinums", Sprache & Kognition : Zeitschrift für Sprach- u. Kognitionspsychologie u. ihre Grenzgebiete, Vol. 15, Issue 3, 1996, pp. 152-166
⁶ Stahlberg, Dagmar; Sczesny, Sabine: "Effekte des generischen Maskulinums und alternativer Sprachformen auf den gedanklichen Einbezug von Frauen", Psychologische Rundschau, Band 52, Heft 3, 2001
⁷ Heise, Elke: "Auch einfühlsame Studenten sind Männer: Das generische Maskulinum und die mentale Repräsentation von Personen", Verhaltenstherapie & Psychosoziale Praxis, 2003, pp. 285-291
⁸ Rotmund, Jutta;Scheele, Brigitte: Personenbezeichnungsmodelle auf dem Prüfstand, Zeitschrift für Psychologie, Vol. 212, Issue 1, 2004, pp. 40-54
⁹ Gygax, Pascal; et al: "Generically intended, but specifically interpreted: When beauticians, musicians, and mechanics are all men", Language and Cognitive Processes, vol. 23, issue 3, 2008, pp. 464-485

Language and the stereotypes it reproduces have a major influence on children. Even at primary school age, they divide professions into "typically male" and "typically female". Girls in particular internalize the idea early on that they are not made for "male professions". They do not become doctors, firefighters or astronauts^.10 Conversely, boys do not consider becoming nursery school teachers, nurses or primary school teachers.

In order to strengthen the self-image of young girls, we need language that does not exclude them. Gender-equitable language helps girls to see themselves in male-dominated professional fields. Not only that, it strengthens their self-confidence that they are at least as competent as boys in these fields and deserve the same recognition^.11 These findings are reinforced by a study from French-speaking Switzerland, which proves that gender-sensitive language helps to break down outdated and sexist stigmatization among young people^.12

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¹⁰ Vervecken, Dries; Hannover, Bettina: "Yes I can! Effects of gender fair job descriptions on children's perceptions of job status, job difficulty, and vocational self-efficacy", Social Psychology, Volume 46, Issue 2, 2015, pp. 76-92
¹¹ Ibid.
¹² Vervecken, Dires; et al: "Warm-hearted businessmen, competitive wives? Effects of gender-fair language on adolescents' perceptions of occupations", Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 6, article 1437, 2015

Aktuelle Studien belegen, dass Frauen sich bis heute nicht von männlichen Ausschreibungen angesprochen fühlen. Dieser Effekt ist auch in anderen Kontexten relevant: In einer Studie aus 2017 wurden Ausschreibungen von Programmen für Unternehmer*innen untersucht. Wird das generische Maskulinum angewandt, glauben Frauen trotz entsprechender Qualifikationen die Anforderungen der Ausschreibungen nicht erfüllen zu können. Dies führt dazu, dass sich weniger Frauen auf diese Ausschreibungen bewerben, auch wenn die Intention hinter den Programmen darin liegt, mehr Frauen anzuwerben.¹³ Zudem wurde untersucht inwiefern Frauen als weniger kompetent in Führungspositionen angesehen werden. Dabei stellte sich heraus, dass Führungspositionen ohne triftigen Grund vermehrt an Männer vergeben werden, wenn Frauen in Ausschreibungen nicht explizit erwähnt werden. Bei geschlechterinklusiven Stellenausschreibungen wurden bedeutend mehr Frauen als fähig angesehen, die Position ausfüllen zu können.¹⁴ Geschlechtergerechte Sprache hat massiven Einfluss auf die Selbstwahrnehmung und die Fremdwahrnehmung von Frauen. Damit ist sie ein wichtiger Schritt hin zu einer ausgewogenen Geschlechterbilanz in allen Berufsfeldern und auf allen Karrierestufen.

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¹³ Hentschel, Tanja; et al: "Kick-starting female careers: Attracting women to entrepreneurship programs. Journal of Personnel Psychology", Volume 17, Issue 4, 2018, pp. 193-203
¹⁴ Hovarth, Lisa Kristina; Sczezny, Sabine: "Reducing women's lack of fit with leadership positions? Effects of the wording of job advertisements", European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, Volume 25, Issue 2, 2016, pp. 316-328

Probably the biggest criticism of gender-inclusive language relates to its (in)comprehensibility. It is often said that texts that use inclusive language forms lose readability. Other critics are concerned with the aesthetics of the German language. According to them, words are broken up in an unattractive way and special characters should not be used within words. For those who use special characters such as the gender gap or asterisk, the visual stumble is not a disruptive coincidence, but the intention: the special character stands out, makes the reader pause for a moment and thus leads to active thinking by all genders^.15

Deliberate stumbling should not be equated with incomprehensibility. Since 2013, texts have been tested for their subjective comprehensibility in various studies; test subjects were presented with texts using the generic masculine, both genders and other forms of gender-sensitive language. In all studies, women found the texts equally easy to understand. A few men rated the generic masculine as more comprehensible^{.16,17,18,19,20} The double pronouns were perceived as particularly annoying. In a study by Braun (2007), participants were asked about the texts after reading them and it was found that there were no significant objective differences in comprehensibility. Gender-neutral terms are the most readily accepted in most studies^.21 Regardless of which age group was surveyed, no disadvantages were found in terms of memory, comprehensibility and readability.

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¹⁵ Jugend des Deutschen Alpenvereins: "Geschlechtergerechte Sprache: Gendersensibel schreiben und formulieren in JDAV-Publikationen", 2018
¹⁶ Rothmund, Jutta; Christmann, Ursula: "Auf der Suche nach einem geschlechtergerechten Sprachgebrauch: Führt die Ersetzung des 'generischen Maskulinums' zu einer Beeinträchtigung von Textqualitäten?", Muttersprache, Vol. 112, No. 2, 2002, pp. 115-136
¹⁷ Steiger, Vera; Irmen, Lisa: "Zur Akzeptanz und psychologischen Wirkung generisch masuliner Personenbezeichnungen und deren Alternativen in juristischen Texten" Psychologische Rundschau, Vol. 58, No. 3, 2007, pp. 190-200
¹⁸ Braun, Frederike; et al: "'For reasons of comprehensibility ...': The influence of generic masculine and alternative personal designations on the cognitive processing of texts", Psychologische Rundschau, Vol. 58, Issue 3, 2007, pp. 183-189
¹⁹ Steiger-Loerbroks, Vera; von Stockhausen, Lisa: "Mental representations of gender-fair nouns in German legal language: An eye-movement and questionnaire-based study" Linguistische Berichte, Heft 237, 2014
²⁰ Pöschko, Heidemarie; Prieler, Veronika: "Untersuchung der Verständlichkeit von geschlechtergerecht formulierten Schulbuchtexten", Zeitschrift für Bildungsforschung, Vol. 8, No. 1, 2018, pp. 5-18
²¹ Weise, Julia: "Sprache und Geschlecht: Eine empirische Untersuchung zur 'geschlechtergerechten Sprache'", Studentische Arbeitspapiere zu Sprache und Interaktion, Heft 3, 2007

Who uses gender-inclusive language? How does it spread? And does its benefit go beyond the visibility of women? It has already been mentioned that the discourse on fair language is older than the reporting of many mainstream media suggests. Nevertheless, the debate seems to have gained particular momentum in the last ten years. This is because gender-equitable language appears in all areas of our everyday lives and has already become the norm in many areas. Terms such as student, employee, carer and chancellor are an integral part of our vocabulary and are no longer questioned.

Mass media have an influence that should not be underestimated - not only on the spread of gender-inclusive language, but also on the behavior of their consumers. As part of a study in 2016, Hansen, Littwitz and Szczesny presented participants with short articles in which either "heroes" or "heroes and heroines" were mentioned. The gender-inclusive contribution not only led to increased visibility for women, but also encouraged participants to use gender-inclusive language^.22

Not everyone adopts gender-inclusive language. Gendering is political - this applies both to the use of inclusive forms and to the use of the generic masculine. It has been shown that the intention behind the use of masculine language is influenced by systemic sexism and the use of gender-inclusive language is a conscious decision to resist this sexist system^.23 The simplest and probably one of the most effective ways to convince a person to use gender-inclusive language is to simply present the arguments in favor of gender-inclusive language and the consistent use of gender-inclusive language. An uncommented example is the best way to dispel concerns about complicating speaking and writing. In contrast, arguments by critics against gender-inclusive language do not appear to have any significant influence on recipients and their use of language^.24 A comprehensive study by Gygax (2008) shows how deeply gender and the associated stigmatizations are anchored in people's minds. In it, the psycholinguist proves that dual names and inclusive forms of language cannot overcome the boundaries of stereotypical job titles on their own. It is therefore clear that gender-fair language can only be seen as a building block on the way to greater gender equality^.25 An overview of the use, dissemination and effects of gender-fair language can be found in the study "Can Gender-Fair Language Reduce Gender Stereotyping and Discrimination?" by Szczesny et al. (2016)^.26

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²² Hansen, Karolina; et al: "The Social Perception of Heroes and Murderers: Effects of Gender-Inclusive Language in Media Reports", Frontiers in Psychology, Volume 7, Article 369
²³ Sczezny, Sabina; et al: "Beyond Sexist Beliefs: How Do People Decide to Use Gender-Inclusive Language?", Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, vol. 41, issue 7, 2015, pp. 943-954
²⁴ Koeser, Sara; Sczezny, Sabine: "Promoting Gender-Fair Language: The Impact of Arguments on Language Use, Attitudes, and Cognitions", Journal of Language and Social Psychology, Vol. 33, Issue 5, 2014, pp. 548-560
²⁵ Gygax, Pascal; et al: "Generically intended, but specifically interpreted: When beauticians, musicians and mechanics are all men", Language and Cognitive Processes, vol. 23, issue 3, 2008, pp. 464-485
²⁶ Sczenzny, Sabine; et al.a.: "Can Gender-Fair Language Reduce Gender Stereotyping and Discrimination?" Frontiers in Psychology, Volume 7, Article 25, 2016

The discourse on gender-inclusive language has been going on since the 1970s, but the inclusion of non-binary people only became a widely discussed topic from the 2010s onwards. As early as 2003, the social philosopher Stefan Kitty Hermann called for the gender gap to include all those who have always been invisible in the German language^.27 The internal I, which contributed significantly to the spread of gender-equitable language, is now increasingly being replaced by gender gap_, gender colon: and gender asterisk*. The latter seems to have become increasingly prevalent since 2015.

Despite their widespread use, these forms of inclusive gendering have hardly been the subject of any academic studies to date. Since 2017, the gender entry divers has been used in Germany alongside male and female. It was created for intersex people who do not identify or locate themselves in the binary gender system. These developments also encourage further discussion of language that is critical of discrimination and the visibility of all genders.

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²⁷ Hermann, Steffen Kitty: "Performing the Gap - Queere Gestalten und geschlechtliche Aneignung", arranca!, Heft 28, 2003

To see what the future could look like for a gender-inclusive language in Germany, it helps to take a look at Sweden. Until a few years ago, the Swedish language was structured in a similar way to German in terms of gender: separated into male and female in binary form. In 2012, the Swedish government broke with the old system and introduced the gender-neutral pronoun "hen", which offers an alternative to she (hon) and he (han). While hen was still viewed negatively by the population in 2012, attitudes towards the neopronoun have changed in just four years. Although hen is only gradually being adopted by Swedes in their everyday language use, the third option is increasingly accepted in Sweden^.28 The dimensions of the reservations about the gender-neutral pronoun hen were the subject of a study aimed at researching the causes of criticism and insecurity among critics. The results are summarized in an article that contains numerous arguments in favour of gender-neutral language and also refutes the reservations and concerns of critics^.29

Profex Lann Hornscheidt is one of the most important current thought leaders on the topic of gender-inclusive language in Germany. Pers (Lann Hornscheidt's Pronomen) has been researching feminist, non-discriminatory language for years. Together with colleagues, pers gives training courses and lectures on gender, discrimination and privilege. In pers's 2015 guide "What to do? Language action - but how? W_Ortungen statt Tatenlosigkeit. "³⁰ Hornscheidt shows the many possibilities of low-discrimination language and questions all the common conventions of the German language.

The discourse on gender-equitable language is developing rapidly and it is not always easy to keep up to date. It is important to continue researching, uncovering discrimination and recording positive changes. Everyone can work to ensure that gender-equitable language becomes commonplace by using it themselves in speech and writing. Current developments can be seen in discourses in the mass media and in sources that deal with the debate in a targeted and well-founded manner. One example of this is the "blog interdisziplinäre Geschlechterforschung" (interdisciplinary gender studies blog) of the NRW Women's and Gender Studies Network.

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²⁸ Gustafsson Sendén, Marie; et al: "Introducing a gender-neutral pronoun in a natural gender language: the influence of time on attitudes and behavior", Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 6, article 893, 2015
²⁹ Vergoossen, Petronella Hellen; et al: "Four Dimensions of Criticism Against Gender-Fair Language", Sex Roles, Issue 83, 2020, pp. 328-337
³⁰ Feministisch SprachHandeln: "Was tun? Language action - but how? W_Ortungen instead of inaction"