A noon today, Kamala Harris became our nation’s first ______, Black, and South Asian vice president. How do you fill in the blank? Would you say “woman”? Or should it be “female” vice president? For the first time in American history, women and girls across the country are represented in the nation’s second highest office. This landmark must be acknowledged and celebrated, but how should we refer to Vice President Kamala Harris? The media coverage of this milestone raises grammatically curious but not insignificant questions about using “woman” as an adjective in the place of “female.”
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) suggests that “woman” may identify or further define the adjacent noun. However, some note the holes in the logic of using “woman” as a modifier of nouns. Traditionalists might argue that “woman” itself is a noun, while “female” may be considered both a noun and an adjective. With a suitable, preexisting descriptor, why use a term that is grammatically incorrect? In a 2014 Guardian article, Maddie York argues that “man” would almost never be used in the same way. “Man scientist” or “man vice president” are much more unsettling to the ear than “male scientist” or “male vice president.” Right?
On the other hand, for many people, and especially those who are feminists, “female” is an uncomfortable word. This is in part due to the fact that the word evokes images of animals in a laboratory or a reproductive diagram in a textbook. Some believe that using “woman” is better because it is a uniquely human term, while “female” can refer to non-human species as well, as in “a female iguana.”
Also, “female” may overlook the nuances that humans use to separate sex (biological differences) from gender (socially established roles and behaviors) by focusing too narrowly on the reproductive system. This is demonstrated by the first OED definition of “female” as “a person of the sex that can bear offspring,” which highlights the reproductive capability of a “female” and therefore excludes trans women. The use of “female” as an adjective can also be thorny due to its long derogatory past, including its role in sexist slurs. A 2016 Time magazine article reports that, according to the OED, since the 1400s “‘female’ has occasionally been used to describe one’s mistress, which could be seen as pejorative — as a sex object.” In that same article, Katherine Martin, the head of U.S. dictionaries at Oxford University Press, also describes OED’s original entry for “female” in 1895, in which editors described its use as “commonly avoided by good writers [except] with contemptuous implication.”
Should use of “woman” versus “female” as adjectives even be up for debate? Must a woman working as a doctor be differentiated from her male colleagues? As described in a 2016 Slate article, Robin Lakoff, Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, is quoted discussing how accentuating femaleness in an artist or politician “suggests that a woman holding that position is marked — in some way unnatural, and that it is natural for men to hold it.” In a more equitable world, we shouldn’t need to modify nouns by the gender of the subject, but how else would we honor the first woman/female vice president? I am not sure where I come down on answering this question. But I do believe there is a difference between using such a description to celebrate a first for women and persistently identifying a person’s gender in all contexts.
Because language matters. It shapes how people are perceived and how institutions operate. In fact, at Women’s Health Research at Yale, such considerations arise even in how we describe “women’s health.” Think about it. Does that phrase conjure anything in your mind?
Language matters -- it shapes how people are perceived and how institutions operate.
In recent years, the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Research of Women’s Health has encouraged centers like ours to use “the health of women” instead of “women’s health.” Why? Because the term “women’s health” has become heavily, often exclusively associated with reproductive health. It can also conjure up “softer” images of nutrition, fitness, or weight loss more suitable to lifestyle magazines. Without proper context, “women’s health” can falsely imply that the content is only important to women, or in other words, that men don’t have to care about it. Yet, the health of women is much more than reproductive health. It includes every aspect of human health from cardiovascular disease and cancer to mental well-being.
This is why WHRY conducts and promotes research and education about the health of women and sex-and-gender differences in health. Our goal is not only to help women, but to change the way science and medicine are practiced and perceived so that everyone benefits.
And, yes, the language we use matters. Words may seem like simple tools unworthy of much thought, or just interchangeable building blocks to construct sentences. But over time, if chosen wisely, they can shape perceptions and change practices for the better.
Ke'ala Akau is a fellow with Women's Health Research at Yale and a junior in Branford College majoring in the History of Science, Medicine, and Public Health. Read more on her blog: "Why Didn't I Know This?"