# profession - gender



## Outsider

A thread about gender neutrality in the Spanish forum has inspired me to ask this question.

In some languages, there are different words for male professionals and for female professionals. For example, "actor" (male) and "actress" (female), or "businessman" and "businesswoman". Other times, the same word is used for professionals of both genders; for instance, "doctor" and "teacher" in English apply to both males and females. 

Does your own language use different names for professionals of different gender, or not? Which is the most common situation, in your opinion?

In Portuguese, I think we have different names for male and female professionals in most cases, although there are some exceptions where the name is the same for both genders.


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## tigger_uhuhu

Yes, in Spanish we use different names for male and female:
Actor-actriz
cocinero-cocinera
licenciado-licenciada
maestro-maestra
profesor-profesora
And much more!
Cheers
Tigger


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## parakseno

In Romanian too, there are means to state exactly the gender:

actor - actor/actriţă
doctor - doctor/doctoriţă
poet - poet/poetesă
teacher - profesor/profesoară
businessman - om de afaceri/femeie de afaceri


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## diegodbs

Outsider said:
			
		

> In some languages, there are different words for male professionals and for female professionals.


Outsider, do you mean different/totally different words (actor-actriz, emperador-emperatriz) or just words that you may modify by adding a certain ending (as in Spanish, -a)?
If this (adding a suffix) were the case, the list of words could be endless.


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## Outsider

Either. I'm just interested in whether there's a difference or not. For example, in Spanish you have _profesor_ and _profesora_, but in English there is only _professor_ for both genders.


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## Whodunit

Outsider said:
			
		

> In Portuguese, I think we have different names for male and female professionals in most cases, although there are some exceptions where the name is the same for both genders.


 
Same in German, I guess. You can almost always add "-in" to a male professional to get the female equivalent. However, there are some words (like Hebamme [midwife] or Fußballprofi [professional football player]) that don't have real equivalents, more or less created ones, because it is sometimes unusual that both genders are allowed to carry out the particuliar profession (Geburtshelfer [male midwife] and Berufsfußballerin (?) [professional woman football player]).


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## diegodbs

Outsider said:
			
		

> Either. I'm just interested in whether there's a difference or not. For example, in Spanish you have _profesor_ and _profesora_, but in English there is only _professor_ for both genders.


I'll add to your list some not so obvious words in Spanish, which don't follow the rule of adding -a. The list of regular -a could be endless.

actor-actriz (actor)
emperador-emperatriz (emperor)
cazador-venadriz/cazadora (hunter)
pecador-pecatriz/pecadora (sinner)
chapero-prostituta (prostitute (masc) and fem.)
auxiliar de vuelo/azafata (air hostess, masc. and fem.)
instructor-institutriz


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## Roshini

In Malay:
actor/actress - pelakon(lelaki/wanita)
model - peragawan(male), peragawati(female)
air host/air hostess - pramugara, pramugrari
doctor - doktor
teacher - guru, cikgu
athletes - olahragawan(male), olahragawati(female)
 Here are some, have fun! :0P


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## macta123

Doctor -   doctor(m) , doctarni(f)
Teacher - mastar(m) , mastarni(f) / adhyapak(m) - adhyapika(f)
Servant   - naukar , naukarani
King   - Raja(m) , Rani(f)  /  Maharaj (m) , Maharani (f)
Singer - Gayak (m) , Gayika (f)


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## betulina

The most common situation in Catalan is the addition of a sufix to the male noun, such as _-a_ (professor - professora)  or  _-essa_ (metge - metgessa (doctor)).  But there are also some invariable terminations such as _-ista _(artista) or _-aire_ (escombriaire (street sweeper)) so that the name is the same for both genders.

(Sorry if my English terminology is not good enough  Corrections are welcome, of course!)


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## amikama

The overwhelming majority of the professionals in Hebrew have a feminine version created by adding a feminine suffix. Exceptions I can think of are ראש ממשלה (prime minister), דוקטור (doctor) and פרופסור (professor), which are the same for male and female.


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## Suane

In Slovak, we have different names for almost all male and female professes.
I know about one that normally has only female form-stewardess-letuška.
For males we could create the word "letuško" but nobody says it (officially) like that-we use English word steward and we pronounce it Slovakian way.
Theoretically, with the system of suffixes, Slovak language is able to generate the female and male form for the words easily- as well as some other languages.
Sometimes I don't like when female and male professes have the same name because I can easily misunderstand the gender, but sometimes it could be maybe better to have the same name- for some reasons.


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## elroy

I can't think of any profession for which Arabic does not house separate masculine and feminine forms.  As with many other languages, we can simply add a feminine suffix to the masculine form.

If such words do in fact exist, they are certainly in the minority.


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## optimistique

In Dutch there exist different suffixes for female forms too. In theory we have that for really a lot of professions, they are however not always used, since a lot of women seem to have the idea (or people in general, personnaly it's not what I do) that their job is not being taken as serious if their specific job title is in a feminine form. (They prefer being called a *"directeur"* (head of a company) instead of its feminine form *"directrice"* for example). Well, it's what happens in any case.

Other examples of female forms:

*zanger - zangeres (singer)
schrijver - schrijfster (writer)
leraar - lerares (teacher)  (almost everything ending in -aar can be turned into -ares)
conducteur - conductrice 
kok - kokkin (cook)
*
I come to think of a lot of examples as well where there aren't any female counterparts:

*bakker (baker, there is no bakster)
slager (butcher)
dokter (doctor)
arts (doctor)*
*chaffeur (driver)*


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## FrancescaVR

Here are a few from the Indonesian language:

_Peragawati dan peragawan_
Female model and male model

_Pramugari dan pramugara_
Female fly attendant and male fly attendant

_Pemudi dan pemuda_
Female youth and male youth

_Aktor dan aktris_
Actor and actres

_Dokteranda (female) dan dokterandus(male)_
An academic title. I am not sure what the English terms for this one. I think it might have derived from Dutch or Portuguese during colonisation era_._ Perhaps its at the same level as BA? Can anyone confirm this?

I think the Swedish have the same as well. I mean _Dokteranda and dokterandus?_

_*Dan* _is Indonesian for _*and.*_


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## FrancescaVR

*Here are a few from the Savunese language:*

*Bəni pe j’oo
Female chanter (The chanter lady)
Mone pe j’oo
Male chanter (The chanter gent)

In the Savunese language, to differentiate genders in their professions, the word bəni is placed before the word which defines the (female) profession. It is the same thing with the word mone for male.

So if one wants to say: female or male traveller, it would be as below in Savunese

Female traveller
Bəni nəru ləpa (sometimes is bəni nəru bəni ləpa)

And

Male traveller 
Mone nəru ləpa (sometimes is Mone nəru mone ləpa)

Bəni means female (man kind only)
Mone means male (man kind only)
*


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## Honour

In Turkish we don't have any gender differentiation in the language. Even we have only one, singular third person pronoun.
There are exceptions in borrowed words of course. Here are some of them;
Aktör-aktris
masör-masöz
müdür-müdire
host-hostes


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## lazarus1907

Embajador, embajatriz (más comúm embajadora)
Defensor, defensatriz (más comúm defensora)
Adorador, adoratriz
Dominador, dominatriz
Institutor, institutriz


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## Encolpius

*Hungarian *

Yes, we usually use 2 different words. 

doctor - orvos/orvosnő (orvos+nő = doctor + woman)
teacher - tanár/tanárnő
actor - színész/színésznő
cook - szakács/szakácsnő


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## Kanes

In Bulgarian you just put femminen affix 'ka' to the word.


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## ger4

In Danish, the feminine suffix _-inde _seems to be disappearing - the formerly masculine job title has often become generic (as in English). In German, I can't see a similar trend; the suffix _-in_ has to be added, except in some rare cases (Whodunit mentioned it in #6):

German* Lehrer* = 'male teacher' <> _*Lehrerin*_ = 'female teacher'
Danish _*lærer* =_ 'teacher', male or female (_lærerinde_ = female version, not used that often)

German _*Kanzler*_ = 'head of government', male <> _*Kanzlerin*_ = female 
Danish _*statsminister*_ = 'prime minister' (no suffix was needed for the former prime minister who was a woman)  

Sometimes you can add _kvindelig_ ('female') if it matters: _*kok*_ = 'cook', male or female <> _kvindelig kok_ = 'female cook'

In German you always have to distinguish a female cook (_*Köchin*_) from a male one (_*Koch*_) - even if it doesn't matter


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## JustKate

In English, _actor_ is often used as a gender-neutral term these days. _Actress_ is still very common, but the term preferred by most of those who actually hold the job seems to be _actor_.


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## 810senior

In principal, we Japanese don't distinguish the gender from profession but we've got a few special vocabulary that demonstrate in particular the ones women work for.

For instance:
俳優haiyuu(actor, it doesn't mean not only masculine job but also feminine one) and 女優joyuu(actress, feminine name for 俳優)
医者isha(doctor, same above) and 女医joi(doctress, a feminine doctor)
工員kouin(worker, particularly in factory) and 女工jokou(a feminine worker)

Except for them, the way to make feminine words is just to add 女性, 女子 or 女 (*female*; working as adjective) ahead of the terms that stand for profession, as in *女*教師(*female *teacher), *女*記者(*female *journalist), *女性*議員(*female *assemblyperson).


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## kloie

Here in America they are trying to make nouns ,professions both male and female because they say the English language is sexist.


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## 810senior

Same here in Japanese, we also made nouns that mean both genders out of some words like 看護婦kangofu(nurse) or 助産婦zyosanpu(midwife),
because 婦fu means lady and some said it's not fair for this expression to all.

New words for them are 看護師kangoshi, 助産師zyosanshi respectively. (師shi is a kind of affix that refers to the profession)


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## Messquito

In Chinese, I would like to say not at all; every profession is mostly called with a neutral name, where you can't identify the gender through it; there are however, few examples that has certain names for different genders (but there's still a "neutral option") :
空姐(sky/air sister)=female flight attendant/stewardess
空少(sky/air youth)=male flight attendant/steward
空服員(air servicer)=flight attendant
(This is the only example I can think of)
However, that doesn't make us less affected by stereotypes; in fact, when we talk about 醫生(doctor), we often think of it as a male; if it's a female, then many would add a 女(female) in front of it. And for 護士(nurse), some would add a 男(male) in front, when it's a male.


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## apmoy70

Greek usually distinguishes between male and female in professions, and I say usually because a large chunk of the nouns belonging in the ancient second declension, were (and are) identical in their feminine and masculine forms, e.g:

Ancient 2nd declension nominal suffix in *«-ος» -ŏs*:
*«Ιατρός»* [i.aˈtros] and colloquially *«γιατρός»* [ʝaˈtros] (masc. & fem.) --> _physician, medical doctor_ < Classical *«ἰᾱτρός» ĭātrós*, Ionic *«ἰητρός» ĭētrós* (masc. & fem.) --> _physician, healer_ (with obscure etymology).
*«Yπουργός»* [ipurˈɣos] (masc. & fem.) --> _minister (government official)_ < Classical *«ὑπουργός» hŭpourgós* (masc. & fem.) --> _assistant, servant_. Compound: «ὑπό» + «ἔργον» (supporting work).
*«Πρωθυπουργός»* [proθipurˈɣos] (masc. & fem.) --> _Prime-minister_ < Modern construction (mid-19th c.) compound: «πρῶτος» + «ὑπουργός» (first-minister).
*«Φύλακας»* [ˈfilakas] (masc. & fem.) --> _guard, security guard_ < Classical *«φύλαξ» pʰúlak͡s* (masc. & fem.) --> _watcher, guard, sentinel_ (with obscure etymology).
*«Μηχανικός»* [mixaniˈkos] (masc. & fem.) --> _mechanic, engineer_ < Classical *«μηχανικός» mēkʰănikós* --> _recourceful, inventive_, since Aristotle, _belonging in the science of mechanics, engineer_ (masc. & fem.) < *«μηχανὴ» mēkʰanḕ* (fem.) --> _tool, machine, device_ (with unclear etymology, and isolated within Greek, the Latin *māchina* is borrowed from the Doric dialectal *«μᾱχανὰ» mākʰanā̀*). 
*«Ηθοποιός»* [iθοpiˈos] (masc. & fem.) --> _actor/actress_ < Classical masc. & fem. nominal *«ἠθοποιός» ētʰŏpoiós* --> _forming/delineate character_. In Hellenistic era it replaced the earlier *«ὑποκριτής» hŭpŏkritḗs* for the actor. Compound: «Ποιῶ» + «ἦθος» (to create character).


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## spindlemoss

In Welsh, with most professions you'd use the grammatically masculine form (*-ydd*, *-wr*) to apply to both males and females, e.g. *gwyddonydd* "scientist", *llywodraethwr *"governer". Feminine forms (*-wraig*, *-es*) of these are technically possible but are mostly rare or sound odd, e.g. *gwyddonwraig* "female scientist", *llywodraethwraig *"female governer". The Welsh government's language department considers the masculine forms to be grammatically masculine but not necessarily male.

However, there _is_ a larger number of specifically male/female forms than in English which are perfectly natural, e.g. *athro*/*athrawes *"teacher", *ysgrifennydd*/*ysgrifenyddes *"secretary", *actor*/*actores *"actor". When the plural refers to these professions of no particular sex, the masculine plural is used e.g. *athrawon *"teachers", *ysgrifenyddion *"secretaries", *actorion *"actors".


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## apmoy70

apmoy70 said:


> ...
> *«Φύλακας»* [ˈfilakas] (masc. & fem.) --> _guard, security guard_ < Classical *«φύλαξ» pʰúlak͡s* (masc. & fem.) --> _watcher, guard, sentinel_ (with obscure etymology).
> ...


Apologies for the *«φύλακας»*, it doesn't belong in the 2nd declension nouns but in the 3rd, together with:
*«Αρχιτέκτων»* [arçiˈtekton] (masc. & fem.) --> _architect_ < Classical noun *«ἀρχιτέκτων» ărkʰĭtéktōn* (masc. & fem) --> _chief-artificer, master-builder, director of works_ < compound; combinatory form *«ἀρχι-» ărkʰi-* of v. *«ἄρχω» ắrkʰō* --> _to be the first, begin, rule_ (possibly from PIE *h₂rgʰ- _to start, rule_ cf Lith. regėti, _to watch_) + noun *«τέκτων» téktōn* (masc. & fem.) --> _carpenter, craftsman, artist, initiator_ (PIE *te-tḱ-n- _carpenter_ cf तक्षक (takṣaka), _carpenter_, Av. tašan- _builder_, Hitt. takš- _to devise_, Lat. texere). Lately the feminine colloquial *«αρχιτεκτόνισσα»* [arçiteˈktonisa] seems to gain acceptance.
*«Αλιέας»* [aliˈe.as] (masc. & fem.) --> _fisherman (fisherwoman?)_ < Classical masc. & fem. noun *«ἁλιεύς» hălieús* --> _fisherman_ < Classical masc. noun *«ἅλς» háls* --> _salt_, its feminine variant *«ἅλς» háls* is a poetical word for the sea (PIE *seh₂-l- _salt_ cf Lat. sāl, Arm. աղ (aɫ), Ltv. sāls, Proto-Germanic *saltą, Proto-Slavic *solь). 
*«Ποιμένας»* [piˈmenas] (masc. & fem.) --> _shepherd_ < Classical masc. & fem. noun *«ποιμήν» poimḗn* --> _sheperd_ (PIE *peh₂- _to protect_ cf Skt. पाति (pā́ti), _to protect, defend_, Av. pā- _to protect_, Lat. pāscere, _to feed, nourish_, Proto-Germanic *fōdijaną, _to feed_).


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## Villeggiatura

apmoy70 said:


> .


What are the feminine forms of -_αρχος/-άρχης_? Is _-άρχη _valid?
I'm only aware of one example Ἀστράρχη/Ἀστροάρχη, not sure whether it applies generally


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## apmoy70

Villeggiatura said:


> What are the feminine forms of -_αρχος/-άρχης_? Is _-άρχη _valid?
> I'm only aware of one example Ἀστράρχη/Ἀστροάρχη, not sure whether it applies generally


No it's not, in MoGr the *«Δήμαρχος»* [ˈðimarxos] --> _Demarch, (in modern times) mayor_, *«Νομάρχης»* [noˈmarçis] --> _Nomarch, (in modern times) District Prefect_, *«Περιφερειάρχης»* [periferiˈarçis] --> _Region Prefect_ (Periphery + ărkʰḗ), *«Ναύαρχος»* [ˈnavarxos] --> _Navarch_, *«Στρατάρχης»* [straˈtarçis] --> _Stratarches_, are identical in masuline and feminine.


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