Use of nonsexist pronouns as a function of one's feminist orientation

Abstract

Subjects of both sexes were shown several sentences that contained a blank space where a third-person singular pronoun should be, and were asked to indicate what pronoun they would choose to complete the sentence. Some sentences referred to traditionally masculine positions (e.g., lawyer), some referred to traditionally feminine positions (e.g., secretary), and some referred to positions with generic titles (e.g., spokesman). As hypothesized, subjects with high scores on Spence and Helmreich's (1972) Attitudes toward Women Scale (AWS) chose nonsexist pronouns more frequently on all three types of sentences than did subjects with low AWS scores. Less feminist trends in the subjects' pronoun choices are discussed.