She's the Next President. Wait, Did You Read That Right?

All by herself. Did you clock the use of that word?

A study released this month shows that you did — and that, in fact, it may have cost you one-third of a second in reading time just now.

Her. It’s a three-letter pronoun that, despite the seemingly endless debate over whether a woman can become president, feels relatively benign. But what if its use, or an unconscious aversion to its use, had some small power to influence voter perception? Could something as simple as a pronoun reflect, or even affect, the way voters understand power?

That’s the question raised by research conducted by cognitive scientists and linguists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Potsdam and the University of California, San Diego, who surveyed people during the run-up to the 2016 election. Wanting to understand how world events might influence language, the researchers hypothesized that the possibility a woman would be elected president at that time might override the implicit bias people had toward referring to the president as “he.”

But what they found was that Americans — even young, self-identified Democratic women who believed Hillary Clinton would win — were reluctant to use “she” even in the context of a hypothetical president.

“There seemed to be a real bias against referring to the next president as ‘she,’” said Roger Levy, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT and one of the authors of the study.

When the researchers watched subjects in a reading setting — they were asked to read a short passage about the next president, pressing a button on a screen to reveal each word of the sentence — their bias was even more pronounced: The word “she,” when referring to the future president, made people cognitively stumble, leading to a “considerable disruption” in reading time, said Titus von der Malsburg, another author of the study and a linguist at the University of Potsdam, in Germany.

“People had difficulties reading ‘she’ even if the text had previously used ‘she,’ showing how persistent and deeply ingrained this bias is,” he said.

So, could struggling to say or read the word “she” in the context of a president affect our willingness to vote for a woman?

“That’s of course the million-dollar question,” said von der Malsburg.

He noted that if people gravitated toward male language when talking about presidents, that could indirectly contribute to a culture in which women were not seen as typical candidates.

“And that, in turn, would likely influence election outcomes because women would have to do extra work to convince voters that they can do the job,” he said.

What Lurks Behind Language?

When it comes to women in politics — and specifically, women in the presidency — often lurking behind language are unconscious assumptions about women in power.

“We are uneasy with the president as ‘she’ because encountering it forces us to have in mind a new conception of ‘president,’” linguist Robin Lakoff said.

Lakoff, whose book “Language and Woman’s Place” helped create the field of gender linguistics in the 1970s, said that language tended to reflect the beliefs of a particular moment in time.

But it can also shape them.

Research has found that the use of the pronoun “he” can create a male bias in readers, that countries with gendered language have higher gender inequality and that even subtly sexist language may influence voters’ likelihood of supporting a particular candidate.

In recent years, some governments and organizations have started paying more attention to the power of words, taking steps to update or replace gendered terms.

In 2013, Washington state joined Florida and Minnesota in combing through its state codes and statutes to adjust terms like “ombudsman” (now “ombuds”) to be gender neutral. As Liz Watson, then senior counsel at the National Women’s Law Center, said at the time, “Words matter. Words help shape our perceptions about what opportunities are available to women and men.”

Administrators at Yale announced in 2017 that they would replace the words “freshman” and “upperclassman” with “first-year” and “upper-level” students, joining several other universities that have informally made the change. And the singular “they” — increasingly popular as both as substitute for “he or she” and as a gender-neutral pronoun for those who identify as nonbinary — was recently declared the “Word of the Decade” by the American Dialect Society.

That would seem like progress, said historian Barbara Berg. Yet when it comes to the halls of power, she said, the masculine “remains the default in our language.”

(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM.)

It is popular these days to tell the story of Abigail Adams, wife of the founding father John Adams, who urged her husband in a letter in 1776 to “remember the ladies.” Lesser known is that his reply, in a letter back, called her request “saucy.” (The word “she,” of course, does not appear anywhere in the Declaration of Independence, nor does the word “woman.”)

And while, over the years, words like “mailman,” “policeman” and “stewardess” have been replaced with terms like “mail carrier,” “police officer” and “flight attendant,” there are still plenty of phrases for which “he” connotes power. Think “manning the command post,” “maestro” or even “guy” as a way to describe expertise — “As in, ‘He’s a stats guy’ or ‘He’s a policy guy,’” said Philip Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland.

The 2018 midterm elections broke all sorts of records — and a historic number of women ran for office and won — and yet they also provided ample opportunity to hear (and see) the phrase “freshman congresswoman.” Doesn’t it sound sort of funny?

Deborah Tannen, a linguist at Georgetown University, described how she had recently spoken with a group of female judges, some of whom recalled being referred to as “sir” when on the bench. Presumably, Tannen said, the speakers were nervous — and “sir” was an attempt to show respect.

“‘Sir’ is associated with respect to an extent that ‘ma’am’ is not,” Tannen said, noting that she, too, had occasionally stumbled over such words.

Once, she recalled, at an event in which Michelle Obama was speaking, a friend remarked that “Dr. Biden” would also be in attendance.

“I thought to myself, ‘Oh, I didn’t know Joe Biden had a Ph.D.,’” she said. “And of course it was his wife, who I had met, and who I knew had a Ph.D. So even I do it — Dr. Tannen.”

And then there’s “Madam.” During the 1970s, feminists fought for the adoption of a female equivalent of “Mr.” — one that did not denote marital status — and were largely successful with the honorific “Ms.” But male presidents in the United States are often addressed as “Mr. President,” while a woman — if the way we refer to Cabinet secretaries is any indication — would quite likely be “Madam President.”

“‘Madam’ could be a term of respect, but it’s also the head of a brothel,” said Berg, the historian. “So it’s like this constant subtle reminder of a woman’s status.”

(END OPTIONAL TRIM.)

A Candidate Who Can ‘Bring People With Her’

But a new breed of candidates may be flipping that script.

During the recent Democratic debate, in addition to Warren’s use of “herself” in reference to the next president on more than one occasion, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said in her closing statement, “We need a candidate who is actually going to bring people with her.”

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., who dropped out of the race late last year, often did the same when she was running. As California’s first female attorney general, she sifted through the language that was written into the law — statutes referring to the attorney general as “he” or “his” — and changed them.

“I’ve always been very aware that when it comes to women holding leadership roles, we are sometimes asking people to see what they have not seen before,” Harris said in an email. “As our government becomes more reflective of the people it represents and the voices at the table become more diverse, it is important for us to really check how we are creating and supporting an inclusive environment — and a big part of that is about how we use language.”

Of course, one might argue there’s something of a feedback loop: The language reflects the culture. The culture won’t change until there is a winning candidate who upends the old biases. But those running for that spot may be impeded by the incessant talking about gender.

(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.)

The researchers said the United Kingdom may provide an encouraging case study.

In 2017, they replicated the study there in the lead-up to an election to determine the next prime minister.

Theresa May was prime minister at the time and was expected to win — but she was not the first woman to hold that post. (That was Margaret Thatcher.)

When referring to the next prime minister, British study participants were more likely to use the pronoun “she” than “he.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .

Check it out here!

She's the Next President. Wait, Did You Read That Right?

Recommended articles

African countries with the highest divorce rate

10 African cities with the highest crime index at the start of 2024

Machoka at 70: Emotions run high during Citizen TV presenter's birthday [Video]

Diwali 2022: Is Monday a public holiday in Kenya?

Akothee finally reveals reasons for separating from Omosh 1 month after wedding

Man, once a ‘billionaire’, recounts how he lost wealth, now sells his book on streets [Video]

Details of Ngina Kenyatta's luxurious restaurant

Zero Chills! Jackie Matubia's advice for Milly Chebby amid the unfollow drama

Nigerian royal dignitaries, including four kings and a queen, expected to attend Museveni’s 50th wedding anniversary celebrations