Pronouns
I was never exposed to the idea of declaring your pronouns, especially in the signature line of an email until I went to college. Excited to delve into the college experience, I joined the Associated Student Government (ASG) during my first term. In my training, the program manager presented a short seminar on email etiquette, which included a section on the practice of pronouns. We were then encouraged to include our pronouns on the signature line of our student staff email. We were not forced to use them, but the presentation made it seem like this was a routine practice.
At that time, I knew about the importance of pronouns to the concept of gender identity, but using them in the signature line of emails was new to me. As I sat at my computer composing my staff email signature line, I was bewildered. Do I choose “she/her/hers” and risk the automatic assumptions from people who don’t know me and whose perception of me might be influenced by gender stereotypes? Do I put “they/them/theirs” and deal with the quizzical smiles and questions? Neither choice felt right. The theme of pronoun “training” has continued throughout my educational journey, and preparation materials often reinforce pronoun usage. Every time I'm "trained”, I feel unsettled and worry that I’ll have to put up a fight.
It only takes a quick Google search of the word “pronouns” to see a plethora of articles and business websites promoting the use of them in the workplace. Many articles posit that displaying your pronouns creates an atmosphere of acceptance for diversity, and signals transgender and non-binary people that the company they are working for (or want to work for) will provide a welcoming environment. Many resources also claim that pronoun usage normalizes the topic of gender identity. I have a difficult time seeing it that way. Thinking in the current political climate needlessly pits trans women against cis women by prioritizing a radical interpretation of trans rights over protecting and expanding the rights of all women. This is a grave oversight. In my view, any kind of gender discrimination is an obstacle to equality, not a way to create it.
When I was 20, I had a job working in sales. I always met the quota and kept up well with cleaning tasks. My boss decided to move on and recommended me for the position of manager. I was interviewed, as was a younger guy with similar experience at another company. We had the exact same qualifications, but I was the only woman in the company, and for whatever reason, he was picked over me. In the spirit of welcoming, I invited him to dinner, and he agreed to come over. He had been flirting with me, so I made it clear that I didn’t want to have sex, and he subsequently canceled. The next day he had altered my work schedule and reduced my hours from 20 to five. I reported the situation to the owner of the company, but he never replied or acknowledged me. I gave notice and quit immediately.
This was not the only time I’ve experienced this sort of sexism, but it is the one that sticks out the most. This situation has led me to worry that I’ll be seen as a woman instead of as a human, and using pronouns in the signature line of emails has exacerbated that fear for me.
I have also realized that using my pronouns in the signature line forces me to choose a label that tells everyone something about me that I don't want to announce publicly. I often sign my personal email with my initials because years of experience have shown me that using my female-appearing birth name results in discrimination. Why would I want to out myself like that on every email I send? Why would I want to be reminded of my gender in hundreds of interactions daily? The experience above, coupled with years of facing sexism, left me wondering if there was any evidence to support the claim that revealing your gender via email results in discrimination.
In 2017, there was a social media post discussing the phenomena of gender bias based on email signatures; it went viral, leading many publications, including Newsweek, to publish a report on the matter. A male supervisor at a resume-writing company accidentally used his female coworkers' email accounts one day. He noticed that previously easy-going clients became difficult, questioning every action that he took. He couldn't understand what was happening until he realized that his female coworker’s name was in the signature line. He decided to swap email accounts for a week to see if this pattern continued. His female coworker had the best week of her career while he struggled to get clients to cooperate. While this incident is ultimately only an anecdotal story about the experience of two individual people, it testifies to the struggle that women experience and is in line with the findings of numerous studies. In some industries, discrimination starts before a woman is even hired. In others, the bias reveals itself as a woman tries to move up the corporate ladder.
The most distinctive study I examined (by Speak With a Geek), as reported by CNET, involved employment in the tech industry. In this study, companies received the resumes of 5,000 candidates to review in two separate rounds. In the first round, when identifiers such as gender appeared on the application, only 5% of women received an interview. With all identifiers removed, the selection rate for women skyrocketed to 54%.
My spouse and I have both worked low-wage jobs for about 10 years. He is less detail-oriented and more relaxed than I am, which makes us a great pairing. In every low-wage job he has ever worked, he has been promoted to a managing position within six months. I have never been promoted to management. I find this laughable because he makes more mistakes and has lower performance ratings than I do. We once even worked at the same company, and he was promoted to shift manager after only two months when I had worked for the company for two years. My performance was better than his in every metric. One day he got called into the office as my coworker and left the office as my manager. I respected him, and we worked well together, but it frustrated me. I strive for nothing less than perfection and he simply aims to meet expectations. I’m sure that there are other factors, but I know that my gender has set me back and kept me in remedial positions.
A study by Lean In titled “Women in the Workplace” showed that, in entry-level jobs, women are nearly equally as likely to be hired as men. The study also reported that women are less likely to be promoted or hired as they try to move up the ladder. This fact is especially prevalent at the highest levels of management, with only 22% of the C-suite or executive level of management employees being women. The author of the study aptly names this phenomenon the "broken rung", which describes the obstacles women face making progress toward higher levels of management. A working paper titled “The Effects of Sexism on American Women: The Role of Norms vs. Discrimination” found that the gender pay gap was more prominent in states where gender discrimination was more prevalent.
How endemic this is can be glimpsed in a Reuters report which showed that a new technology developed by Amazon to select job candidates preferred to hire men. This report states that resumes that included the words "women's" or had candidates who attended all-women's colleges received lower scores on a five-star rating scale. The AI then selected top applicants in the same way that the industry has for years, rewarding resumes that contained masculine language. Similar observations can be drawn from a Washington Post article highlighting women's difficulties in online forums and online gaming, where female users are 25 times more likely to report receiving threatening or sexually explicit messages. The accumulation of these reports, papers, data, and articles begs the question: why would I want to reveal my gender explicitly in every email I send if I am statistically more likely to experience discrimination?
Sexism has other consequences, too. The Economic Journal of Research in Educational Psychology published a study concluding that a girl or woman reminded before a test of the negative associations made with her gender scores more poorly than a girl or woman who is not reminded. This event is called a “stereotype threat”, or a condition where a negative stereotype causes poor outcomes such as lower test scores or class withdrawal that would not be otherwise present. My experience bears this out.
My first selected major at college was mathematics, and I spoke to a good friend who is a math teacher to determine the best path to take. He told me that I shouldn’t go to school for mathematics because it would be too difficult. I typically scoff at people who tell me I can’t do something, but because of stereotype threats involving women in STEM programs, I believed that I wouldn’t be successful. So, if reminding a woman of her gender before a test had such evident negative impacts, how would reminding a woman of her gender in hundreds of interactions daily impact her ability to work? When someone reads a signature line, what do they project onto a person who identifies as a woman or as non-binary? Unless someone is communicating with their gynecologist, neither gender nor sex should have anything to do with business or collegiate correspondence.
Finally, there is the legal aspect of requiring pronouns to be considered. As The Legal Feminist puts it: "Insisting that employees put pronouns into their signature, therefore, leaves women who do not accept the idea that everyone is born with an innate gender identity in a dilemma. They must either comply, aligning themselves with a political position they disagree with; or else reveal their political views in the workplace, which carries a risk of adverse consequences."
In this article, the author outlines the many legal issues involved with requiring pronouns in signature lines, the greatest of which is "inadvertently creating a culture where those with the she/her pronouns experience discrimination as a result of their sex."
So why have companies adopted the practice of including pronouns in emails? It feels like a disconcertingly weak move on the part of colleges and businesses to virtue signal without doing anything material toward making conditions better for trans people or considering the tradeoff of increasing the likelihood that women (cis and trans) will experience sexism. Companies see that their optics improve if they appear inclusive, but the practice of including pronouns in signature lines doesn't unequivocally help trans people. Nowhere on the "Supporting the transgender people in your life" tab on the page for the National Center for Transgender Equality does it state, "Put your pronouns in the signature line of emails."
I'll leave you with some final questions that I had in writing this article. Even the thought of asking people to identify their race, religion, or marital status at the bottom of an email is unconscionable, so why do we accept this expectation for another protected class? Only 0.9% of the population identify as transgender. Why is this debatable strategy to integrate trans people something that the rest of the 99.1% must center in every online interaction they have to the level of elevating gendered pronouns to equal importance with their name? What about the needs of nearly 50% of the population that has experienced a long history of gender discrimination, many of whom wish to decrease rather than increase the salience of gender? If you google the phrase "pronouns", you'll receive a plethora of websites with pithy company statements, like “Share your pronouns; it encourages a sense of community.” Do the phrases “Share your religion; it encourages a sense of community”, or “Share your race; it encourages a sense of community” have the same ring, or do they just seem wrong?
I appreciate that pronouns are important and that they are a huge part of identity for a lot of people. However, as a woman, I don't feel that asking, pressuring, or requiring pronouns in the signature lines of emails is the solution. At a point, pronouns also hinder individuality because they put you into a box with only three labels, all of which carry their own stigmas. If employers ensured their employees that they would respect the pronouns they use and create environments that truly celebrate all kinds of diversity, it would go a long way toward making a material difference.
I have since moved on from the Associated Student Government and am now involved as a student employee in other capacities. Since writing this article, I have discussed pronoun usage in the signature line of emails with several colleagues and mentors. Much to my surprise, everyone with whom I’ve addressed this issue has agreed with my position. My collaborators mentioned that they felt pressure to add pronouns to their emails even though it has not been explicitly stated. I get the sense that others, too, worry that things have shifted too far. These discussions typically end with ideas for solutions. The furtherance of gender-neutral hiring practices or the inclusion of gender identity and anti-discrimination regulations, for instance, would go a lot further toward creating a more equitable world than an anxiety-producing protocol that pigeonholes us into a limited set of pronouns.
Whatever the solution, I believe that our society is well-equipped to establish common ground that creates equality without relying on word games. If I’m right about that, then I can also have hope that the future will see everyone’s individuality respected and everyone’s privacy honored.
Published Jan 5, 2022
Updated Apr 18, 2024
Published in Issue X: Clash of Ideologies
