Two Languages, Two Directions: What English and Ukrainian Can Teach Us About Gender and Words

Alona Shashko, Iryna Savchenko 

Here is a fun question to pose to your students: if English and Ukrainian are both trying to make language fairer and more inclusive, why are they doing the exact opposite things? English is removing gender from words. Ukrainian is adding it. And yet both trends are driven by the same basic idea: that the old way of doing things left a lot of people out.

         Over the past few decades, English has been quietly retiring a set of gendered occupational words. Stewardess became flight attendant. Fireman became firefighter. Policeman became police officer. And — the example that recently made headlines — Jennifer Aniston pointedly referred to herself as an actor, not an actress.

The logic is straightforward. Words like actress or waitress treat the masculine form as the default and mark women as a kind of special case. Linguists call this “markedness.” Removing the feminine suffix — or replacing -man compounds with neutral alternatives — means nobody is marked as the exception. The job title just describes the job.

This shift now has serious institutional backing. The Associated Press Stylebook recommends gender-neutral occupational terms. The American Psychological Association’s Publication Manual (7th edition, 2020) says the same. And in 2019, Merriam-Webster officially added the singular they — as in “someone left their umbrella” — to its dictionary, naming it Word of the Year.

Ukrainian language is doing something that looks like the opposite — but is actually solving the same problem from a different angle.

Ukrainian, like most Slavic languages, has a full grammatical gender system. Every noun is masculine, feminine or neuter. For a long time, the masculine form of professional nouns served as the generic default for everyone. A female doctor was simply called лікар / likar/ (masculine). A female journalist was журналіст / zhurnalist/  (masculine). A female author was автор /avtor/ (masculine). Women were grammatically invisible in the professional vocabulary.

Feminitives are the fix. By adding standard Ukrainian suffixes — most commonly -ка /ka/— speakers create explicitly feminine forms: лікарка /likarka/ (female doctor), журналістка /zhurnalistka/ (female journalist), авторка / avtorka/ (female author), директорка / dyrektorka/  (female director), президентка /prezydentka/ (female president). The goal is visibility: if both forms exist, both genders are present in the language.

This movement gained major momentum after Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity in 2013–2014 and accelerated after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Language became bound up with national identity and social change. Ukrainian media, government offices, and universities adopted feminitives as standard practice. As linguist Larysa Masenko and others have argued, using the masculine form for female professionals was a kind of symbolic erasure. Feminitives are a correction.

 Both English and Ukrainian are reacting to the same underlying issue: for centuries, masculine forms have functioned as the default, and everyone else has been an afterthought. The strategies are different because the languages are different. English, which has almost no grammatical gender left, solves the problem by stripping away the last remnants of it. If no form carries a gender marker, nobody is marked as unusual. Ukrainian, which has a rich gender system baked into its grammar, solves the problem by making the feminine form fully legitimate and standard. If both forms are equally normal, women are no longer invisible.

Two approaches. One goal. And both of them, it turns out, are supported by research. Studies on the “generic masculine” (Stahlberg et al., 2007) have shown that when masculine forms are used as defaults, listeners and readers overwhelmingly picture men — even when the reference is supposed to be general. Language shapes the mental images we form. Changing the language, in a modest but real way, changes the images.

So what can English teachers do with all of this?

Teach neutral forms as the current standard, not as a political choice. When introducing occupational vocabulary, lead with firefighter, flight attendant, and police officer. Mention fireman and stewardess as older alternatives students may encounter, but frame the neutral forms as what contemporary professional English looks like.

Address singular they directly. Learners often think it is a mistake. It is not. It has appeared in English writing since at least the 14th century and is now endorsed by every major style guide. A simple, confident explanation goes a long way.

Use the Ukrainian comparison as a discussion starter. Ask students: “How does your language handle professional titles? Is there a masculine default? Does it bother you?” For speakers of Ukrainian,  Polish, Spanish, Arabic or any gendered language, this question lands immediately. It makes the abstract concept of linguistic gender feel personal and real.

Talk about why language changes. Both trends we have discussed were driven by social change, not by grammarians sitting in a room making decisions. Helping learners see that language evolves in response to how society thinks — and that word choices carry social meaning — is one of the most genuinely interesting things we can offer them.

Acknowledge that not everyone agrees. Some Ukrainian speakers find feminitives awkward or unnecessary. Some English speakers resist gender-neutral language. Language change always generates friction. Acknowledging this honestly, and discussing why, makes for a far more interesting class than pretending the issue is settled.

English is taking gender out of words. Ukrainian is putting more of it in. On the surface, that looks like a contradiction. But both languages are doing exactly the same thing: trying to update an old system that was built around masculine as the default, at a time when that assumption no longer reflects how people live or work. That is a conversation worth having in any language classroom.

References

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.).

Associated Press. (2023). AP Stylebook. Associated Press.

Masenko, L. (2010). Мова і суспільство. KMA.

Merriam-Webster. (2019). They. Merriam-Webster.com.

Stahlberg, D., Braun, F., Irmen, L., & Sczesny, S. (2007). Representation of the sexes in language. In K. Fiedler (Ed.), Social communication (pp. 163–187). Psychology Press.

Author bio:

Alona Shashko is an experienced university lecturer, English language teacher, and theater practitioner from Ukraine. She has over 20 years of professional experience working with English in academic, educational, and cultural contexts.

Alona teaches English at the university level and specializes in working with adult learners. Currently,she teaches at Dragomanov Ukrainian State University (Kyiv,Ukraine). Alona has participated in numerous educational and cultural projects in Ukraine and internationally, contributing as a lecturer, translator, writer, mentor, and curator of educational programs. Her professional interests lie at the intersection of language education, performance, and cultural exchange.
Iryna Savchenko is a Ukrainian literature professor at Dragomanov Ukrainian State University (Kyiv,Ukraine) with more than 30 years of teaching experience. She has been working with Ukrainian in academic,educational, and cultural contexts. Iryna actively monitors changes in the Ukrainian language and their implementation by modern Ukrainian writers.

Contacts : 

https://www.facebook.com/alona.shashko

Shashkoalona@gmail.com

https://www.facebook.com/irina.savcenko1

7_13@ukr.net