Words Matter: Supporting Gender Equality Through Language and Communication

Language and communication play a pivotal role in shaping our attitudes and behaviours and norms in society. They hold significant potential for not only supporting but also promoting gender equality.

This guide is designed to offer a broad and practical approach to using language and communication effectively to support gender equality.

Language and communication constantly evolve as we continually strive to strengthen and uphold gender equality. This guide therefore reflects a context-specific moment in time.

In this guide, we focus primarily on a gender-inclusive approach to language and communication. The aim is to strengthen the focus on both gender and intersecting inequalities such as age, ethnicity, migrant background, disability and sexual orientation.

Gender-inclusive language means ‘speaking and writing in a way that does not exclude or discriminate against a particular sex, gender or gender identity, and does not perpetuate sexism or gender stereotypes’^[1].

This guide has been developed from the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) Toolkit on Gender-sensitive Communication published in 2019. Our 2019 toolkit focused on gender sensitive language, defined as follows: ‘gender equality made manifest through language. Gender equality in language is attained when women and men – and those who do not conform to the binary gender system – are addressed through language as persons of equal value, dignity, integrity, and respect.’

This guide takes the next step and adopts a gender-inclusive approach to align the guidance with current standards and practices of European and global public institutions (more in ‘Other guides’). It also aims to highlight the importance of considering a gender and intersectional perspective in the use of language. This helps to shed light on the interaction between gender and characteristics such as age, ethnicity, migrant background, disability and sexual orientation and gives visibility to different groups of women and men in diverse life situations.

What is in the guide?

In this practical guide, we primarily focus on how to maintain a gender-inclusive approach to language and communication. We also share examples of other approaches to language that could be considered, depending on the situation and context.

Each section of this guide contains questions and practices to provoke thought and consideration. These include exercises for self-reflection to understand where biases exist, a plan for building inclusive messaging and guiding principles for developing communication formats, such as visual storytelling, social media, videos, voice-overs and events.

Who can use it?

This guide is intended for wide use, whether you are a parliamentary assistant draftingtexts, work in a corporation or civil society organisation or are a communications specialist.For actionable tips and tools to guide you towards more gender-inclusive language andcommunication choices, this guide will serve as a good starting point.

Other guides

This guide is not a definitive resource. It can be used alongside others that are targeted at different audiences working in other areas. Notable examples include the following.

• The Council of Europe’s Guidelines for the use of language as a driver of inclusivity is aimed at supporting Council of Europe staff in communicating in a gender-inclusive way in the two official languages of the organisation: English and French.
• The UN’s ‘Gender-inclusive language’ guidelines and toolbox provide recommendations to help UN staff to use gender-inclusive language in any type of communication – oral or written, formal or informal, or for an internal or external audience.
• Oxfam’s Inclusive Language Guide focuses on ending intersecting forms of inequality through written communication. It provides advice on the language preferred by marginalised people, groups and communities.