Book: Invisible Women

The generic male, e.g. "los" in Spanish – not only a formality. Yes, "everyone knows" women are included, but studies show that people overwhelmingly think of males. I got the impression these are pretty good studies too.

Languages come in three groups –

1. those that weave gender into the language, like Spanish
2. those that don't, but allow optionally specifying gender, like English and Swedish
3. those where you can't say gender, like Finnish

Turns out that the most unequal societies belong to the first group, and the most equal belong to the second. The third may sound ideal, but they make it hard to correct for biases present in culture: in practice, because of the cultural default male, it's not like having the Spanish neologism "les", but like having the generic male "los" everywhere and lacking both "las" and "les".

What links here

• How to measure unpaid work?
• Nonfiction I've read