Gender bias and language courses

  • Post category:Social
  • Reading time:5 mins read

There is an overwhelming discussion around the world about equality. One dimension of that equality equation is gender. The argument is equal pays, equal opportunities, equal duties etc. A big part of the population is simply following the topic and their support is based on emotions and feelings on how they understand equality. They in general have no idea about statistics, data, analysis, environment, circumstances and their impact. When it comes to this discussion of equality people somehow suddenly start to believe that world and especially humans are very simple. In their perspective if I open a company, and I have 10 people, then there must be 5 women and 5 men. If there is hierarchy then at each level there must be same amount of men and women and they must have same salary (Let’s not start the argument of hierarchy vs flat workforce). I am not sure how they want to balance roles e.g. I must have 2 CEOs (male and female) and 2 CTO (male and female)? Maybe it is ok to start with male CEO and female CTO. But then if I open a position of CIO, then either I must have 2 CIO or open another position e.g. CAIO to keep the balance. Keeping it simple, having even number of people for each role would make it easy to distribute equal salaries. Otherwise who is deciding if CEO and CTO can have the same salaries.

This is one perspective, in which one can find this topic of gender equality being discussed. Some time people have bias for their own gender during a discussion; a female fighting that they are mistreated. On other times bias comes from other direction also. That could be simply because of overemphatic emotions or some time due to some other interests. This bias can make them blind against certain data or observation. I suggest to watch this interview to see what I mean about bias.

It is interesting that on big stages, people are fighting about this equality. They would behave as if someone has planned a very deep hidden conspiracy to create inequality. It goes to the level, that they would talk about someone creating this kind of conspiracy and they would also say that someone now needs to come up with a plan to stop/reverse this conspiracy. If you ask them, do you see how your own behavior promotes this inequality. Have you done anything about it ? The answer would be No or it is impossible as this is the result of the mind-washing by conspiracy people! And these are the people who also believe that they themselves came to realize that there is inequality and it is not the result of someone else creating a conspiracy to destabilize a running system.

Over the years, I tried to learn few languages. I am not so good at learning languages, but atleast I tried to learn German, Italian and now I am learning Croatian. I keep on forgetting the vocabulary of these languages as I move to learn a new language and stop using the earlier one on daily basis. E.g. when I have to say “yes” to a simple question, I moved from “yes”(English) to “ja”(German) to “sí”(Italian) and now to “da”(Croatian). It just happened by default based on social environment and needs. There was no conspiracy to make it happen like this. While I do not remember other languages to the same detail as I once knew, but I remember one thing as to how deep this “gender bias” exists when we learn a language. I am not sure if there are these “equality communities” fighting against language schools to change their literature to make it more “equal”.

E.g. if you are using a mobile application or other online language learning program, you can easily find below sentences

These are just few examples that one can find while doing those lessons. Sure I would learn the words and grammar, but somewhere I would also learnt this bias; implicitly. I was not trying to learn it and nobody was trying to make it learn so. These are the simple observations of life as we see it on a daily basis.

Was this daily behavior also planned by some conspiracy guy hidden somewhere in the bottom of the sea while all his templars are managing the business on this earth? Or the fact that “females” happened to give birth to a baby and had to stay at home for themselves and for the baby is also one of those most-well-kept-secret conspiracy? I am a believer of the story of evolution, but I see some of us are trying to fight back on such conspiracies and trying that males would have to give birth and as a result would have to stay home to take care of themselves if not the babies.

I intentionally left the point of LGBTQ out of the scope of this article as that would make writing this article exponentially complicated. For an example, now I could write he does this and she does that. If we have to be always specific then I do not know how to replace “he” and “she” while still keeping a single sentence. If anyone knows then please leave a comment with modified sentence from above. I would be waiting with a smile to read and learn something new.

Keep smiling

Love

Arundeep Singh


The preacher was visiting Mulla Nasrudin in the hospital, who had been injured in a fight. “I am going to pray so you will forgive your enemy for hitting you with a brick,” the preacher said. “IT MIGHT BE BETTER,” said Nasrudin, “IF YOU WAITED UNTIL I GET OUT OF HERE AND THEN PRAY FOR THE OTHER FELLOW, SIR.”