Labels and Biases

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WHEN YOU READ THE PHRASE: "THEY WERE ACTING HYSTERICAL"

what image comes to mind? You likely pictured an emotional woman. Don’t worry, you ’ re not alone – studies of how modern language is spoken found that people use the word “hysterical” to describe women 3.5 times more often than they use it to describe men. Today, the official definition for “hysterical” is “deriving from or affected by uncontrolled extreme emotion ” Used in the wild, it is often a descriptor of someone (likely a girl or woman) who is acting extremely emotional or crazy This is not a coincidence The history of the word “hysterical”, like many words, is a misogynistic one

Beginning in Ancient Greece, “hysterical” wasn’t just a descriptor, but an actual medical diagnosis. Physicians believed that a woman ’ s uterus could literally wander throughout her body. When the uterus wasn’t in its proper spot, it caused medical issues – “hysteria” The term is derived from the Greek word “hystericus”, which directly translates to “of the womb” This belief in a “wandering uterus” lasted for centuries, following us into the early

1900s, where many women with various different symptoms were diagnosed as “hysterical” In 1880, American physician George Miller Beard compiled a list of “hysteria” symptoms that was over 75 pages long (and deemed incomplete) The symptoms of “hysteria” included normal medical symptoms like headaches, back pain, and loss of appetite, as well as more outlandish (and slightly sexist) symptoms such as writing cramps (from writing too much), aging, hot flashes, and even being a suffragette Since hysteria was caused by a “wandering uterus”, one of the “ cures ” was to remove the uterus entirely a procedure that is still called a hysterectomy to this day

Physicians now understand that a uterus doesn’t cause extreme emotions, and hysterectomies are not a cure for craziness Yet the word “hysterical” is still common in people’s vocabularies and is disproportionately used to describe women. This is just one example of how the biases against women are manifested through the labels we use.

It is hard to overstate just how rooted gender is within our language. Even though English is unlike other Romantic languages in that all of its nouns are not gendered, there are still implicit genders in many English words.

Many languages have gendered words. For example, in Spanish la felicidad – happiness is feminine. el rojo – red is a masculine word. Some words even change meaning all together depending on the “gender” of the word – Like the word cura. el cura is male priest while la cura is cure. More contraversaly, some languages have gendered professions. In French, the word doctor is always masculine, even if the doctor is a woman – Le docteur but the word nurse is feminine – infirmière. It’s pretty obvious how this could contribute to gender bias in the workplace.

For example, take the word “bossy”. A 2015 survey by the Centre for Creative Leadership found that women are twice as likely as men to be labeled bossy – a descriptor that is intended to be an insult. Or, you may have noticed, if there is a group of women talking together is called gossiping, while a group of men talking together is referred to as bantering or discussing. A woman is considered aggressive, while a man doing the same thing is assertive. Unlike the labels used to describe men, the labels used to describe women are often unfavorable or even insulting, and are often used to negatively shift the way women are perceived.

Not only do frequent labels for women have negative connotations, but many words that describe women have also evolved over time to have negative definitions. Take the words buddy and sissy, for example. Both words started as abbreviations for brother and sister respectively. Now, buddy means your best friend, and sissy is an insult. Specifically, sissy is used to insult men. The same pattern appears in mistress and master. Both words started as gendered titles but in today’s age, the label mistress describes a woman having relations with a married man, and master is someone who has become very skilled at something – an expert

These biased labels we provide women have many real-life implications Not only is the nagging woman unable to have the same respect in the workplace as the critiquing man, but there are also funding disparities too In 2016, only 12% of funding from the National Science Foundation went to soft sciences, while the remaining 88% went to hard sciences

One of the reasons for the large disparity? Gender bias

The difference between hard and soft sciences has to do with how repeatable experiments are Hard sciences are able to isolate variables, and experiments can be repeated with high precision Soft sciences have variables that can’t be isolated, and therefore, experiments can’t be perfectly repeated Despite what the names imply, both types of sciences are difficult and important So why do soft sciences receive so little funding compared to hard sciences?

A 2022 study by the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia and Indiana University found that as more women enter a STEM field, that field is more likely to be perceived as a soft science As a result, the study concluded that “labeling disciplines as soft sciences led to the fields being devalued, deemed less rigorous, and less worthy of federal funding ”

Labeling is an important and useful tool to help us understand and explain the world But, living in a patriarchal society, the language we use to label people is often biased against women This results in women being given negative labels, which is yet another uphill battle that women face when trying to compete with men who automatically receive more respect by simply having more positive labels associated with them (and their collective gender) The good news is we can fight against this bias (and other patriarchal ideals) by changing how we label people We can label both men and women exactly the same Or we can come up with new labels all together Language isn’t concrete it is constantly changing so we can redefine words, add new words to the dictionary, or remove the words with the more misogynistic histories, like “hysterical”. The next time you see a woman taking charge of a room, don’t call her aggressive; instead, call her assertive. Or maybe even give it a new label all together, something positive and encouraging.