Gender-inclusive writing in German

At a purely grammatical level, the question of gender is not much of an issue for modern-day English. In fact, we got rid of grammatical gender many moons ago following the Middle Ages, with feminised nouns such as authoress and poetess having long since fallen out of fashion. As such, going gender-inclusive or even completely gender-neutral is grammatically possible without much thought or effort. To give a comparative example: In English, ‘a doctor’ can refer to either a man or woman – you would need to specify to make it clear. In French, however, it is ‘un docteur’ for a male and ‘une docteure’ for a female. And in German, the change is even more distinct, with ‘ein Artzt’ for males and ‘eine Ärztin’ for females.

In this article, we give a brief overview of this grammatical aspect of the German language. What follows is by no means exhaustive and we are always happy to expand at request.

The problem for languages such as German boils down to their strict grammatical structures. In German, every single noun is either feminine (die), masculine (der), or neutral (das). So you have ‘die Frau’ (the woman), ‘der Mann’ (the man) or – to give a somewhat illogical example – ‘das Mädchen’ (the girl). Even inanimate objects like a table or chair have a gender. This grammatical framework is firmly embedded in the very linguistic foundations of German and – unless there are sweeping reforms of the entire language – you cannot circumvent it completely. In other words, achieving gender neutrality in German is not possible, but there is a steadily growing uptake of gender-inclusive language, which is often referred to in German as gendergerechte Sprache or geschlechtergerechte Sprache.

The German language offers a myriad of methods to be more inclusive. Here we list some of the most common approaches using the noun for ‘employee’ – which translates into German as either ‘der Mitarbeiter’ (male) or ‘die Mitarbeiterin’ (female).

• The gender asterisk (‘Genderstern’). This typographical symbol sits between the word stem and the feminine ending to merge both the masculine and feminine forms together. So here, you’d first write out the masculine form ‘Mitarbeiter’, followed by an asterisk then the feminine ending ‘in’: Mitarbeiter*in.
• Collective nouns. There is often, but not always, an option to find a non-explicit collective noun that expresses the same meaning, with one example here being ‘Personal’ (staff/personnel). By referring to the group as a whole rather than the individuals, you can neatly avoid the matter of gender.
• Duplication. One simple method is to write out both the male and female versions of a noun when referring to persons. Here: ‘Mitarbeiter und Mitarbeiterinnen’ (literally: male employees and female employees).
• Gender-neutral formulations. These are not always available in German, but for nouns formed from verbs, you can use what is known as the plural participle: ‘die Studierende’ (those who study = students), ‘Teilnehmende’ (those who take part = participants), or ‘Mitarbeitende’ (those who work = employees).
• The passive tense. Passive constructions are used to show interest in the person or object that experiences an action rather than the person or object that performs the action. An active sentence in English would be ‘We translated the book’: The passive alternative would be ‘The book was translated’. The use of the passive is a common feature of the German language, certainly more so than in English. It can be used to strip the aspect of gender from a sentence. To give an example: ‘Der Mitarbeiter prüft den Antrag’ – which translates as ‘The employee is reviewing the application’ – can be amended to ‘Der Antrag wird geprüft’, meaning ‘The application is being reviewed’. By switching to the passive and removing the subject of the sentence (i.e. the person doing the action), the matter of gender becomes irrelevant.
• The substantive noun ‘man’. Now this may well look counterintuitive if you don’t speak German, but ‘man’ is a gender-neutral pronoun that is essentially the equivalent to what is known in English as the ‘royal we’ (pluralis majestatis). Note: It is not the same as how ‘they’ can be used in English to refer to a known individual without specifying their gender. So literally translated, the German phrase ‘Man arbeitet Montag bis Freitag’ would be ‘One works Monday to Friday’. It is not clear who ‘one’ is.

Whilst gender-inclusive writing certainly has its advocates, there is no denying it also attracts criticism. Arguments against gender-inclusive writing practices usually centre around the look of the text and readability, particularly as regards people with limited language skills. Some take issue with the resulting extra length of text and the insertion of symbols (*), which is said to make texts more cumbersome to follow.

Take the use of the passive, for example, by removing the mention of who is doing what, you render the message vaguer and essentially change the focus. To say ‘The employee is reviewing the application’ focuses more on who is doing the review, whilst ‘The application is being reviewed’ places the focus more on the act of reviewing itself, without mentioning who is taking care of it. By using the passive here, you are removing a piece of information.

Even amongst those who support gender-inclusive language there is debate on how to approach the matter. This is primarily down to methods such as the gender asterisk and duplication, i.e. writing out both male and female forms, failing to also include non-binary individuals. Finding a solution that pleases all is certainly no easy task and it calls for conscious effort to shape a text accordingly.

Understanding German grammar is from far a walk in the park, and the question of gender is just one of the many quirks that this language offers up. If you’re looking to publish content for the DACH region, be it a marketing brochure or a fantasy novel, First Edition Translations has got you covered. As part of the process, we are very happy to advise you on cultural aspects such as gender-inclusive writing. We are a long-standing certified translation agency headquartered in Cambridge and offer services to private individuals, businesses big and small, museums, cultural organisations, and public sector stakeholders. Our friendly multilingual project management team is on hand under enquiries@firstedit.co.uk for any queries.