Adjectives and nouns

July 22, 2007 8:57 PM

Why do we say ".... the first woman *blank* ..." instead of "... the first female *blank* ..."

Headlines seem to always read "The first woman president of India ... " We don't write "The first man president of India," it would be "The first male president of India..." So what gives? It kinda drives me nuts. Is there a reason we specify an adult female for things like this?

posted by captaincrouton to Writing & Language (26 answers total)

The first female in space was not the first woman in space.

We tend not to have a reason to say either "the first man president" or "the first male president" very often.
posted by gimonca at 9:05 PM on July 22, 2007

Best answer: Here's an International Herald Tribune article on the subject. Apparently, some feminists are turning against the use of "female".

I have a doctor who is a woman, but I just refer to her as my doctor. But I cannot believe how many people -- especially doctors -- always say "he" or "him" when we're talking about my doctor. Even though more than 50% of med school grads in my country are women, people still seem to assume that "doctor" means "man" unless you say "woman doctor" (which makes me think of an ob-gyn).
posted by acoutu at 9:16 PM on July 22, 2007

(Before any Sunday evening factcheckers show up...should be 'orbit', not 'space'.)
posted by gimonca at 9:19 PM on July 22, 2007

Er... my off the cuff answer would be that female and male more readily implies biological sex (what you're born with) where as man and woman can be used to describe chosen gender? In so far as the law is concerned you can change your gender, but not your sex. (Or maybe I have that backwards...) Thus, its probably more historically accurate for a journilist (or record keeper) to describe someone by their sex rather than gender. After all, what does your birth certificate say? Male or Man? Woman of Female?
posted by wfrgms at 9:24 PM on July 22, 2007

Female is how you'd describe an animal. A woman is a member of society. The latter term is more respectful. Of course cops would say female instead of woman but that is also a more arm's length description of a specimen or subject of some sort rather than implying the person is somewhat member of one's group.
posted by Listener at 9:33 PM on July 22, 2007 [1 favorite]

BBC: First Female President for India

and then right away:

"Pratibha Patil is to become India's first woman president ..."
posted by gimonca at 9:38 PM on July 22, 2007

Here's the usage note from the American Heritage Dictionary, 4th edition, found at the entry for lady (italics as in the original):

Lady, a social term, is properly used as a parallel to gentleman to emphasize norms expected in civil society or in situations requiring civil courtesies: She is too much of a lady to tell your secrets to your friends. The use of lady as an attributive with an occupational title, as in lady doctor, is widely regarded as condescending and inappropriate. When the sex of the person is relevant, both woman and female are acceptable: the first woman vice-president; the female candidates.

So perhaps that doesn't really satisfy your craving to know why it's this way, but at least one dictionary seems to think that both are acceptable when the sex of the person is relevant (which is often debatable). The entry for gentleman refers to the same usage note above.
posted by mdonley at 9:56 PM on July 22, 2007

More digging: The Oxford English Dictionary Online has this note, at the beginning of the entry for woman (italics mine):

I. 1. a. An adult female human being. (The context may or may not have special reference to sex or to adult age: cf. MAN n.1 4 a, c, d.)

†man or (or and) woman used appositionally = male or (and) female.

To use something appositionally (again from the OED here) is

The placing of a word beside, or in syntactic parallelism with, another; spec[ifically] the addition of one substantive to another, or to a noun clause, as an attribute or complement; the position of the substantive so added.

The "substantive" in that definition (OED once again) is

The part of speech which is used as the name of a person or thing; a noun.

What all that means is that when you say woman president, even though both woman and president are nouns, by placing woman *in front of* president, you're really saying female president; that is, you've functionally changed woman, in the ears of the listener/eyes of the reader, into a quasi-adjective...thing.

My mind just kind of dissolves at this point, and this is where I expect languagehat to come in and save the day:), but my reading of these two sources leads me to believe that both are at least grammatically possible, regardless of the social caché each word holds, and that there's no clear statement yet on which is preferable in which settings.

And what's wrong with dudette president, anyway?
posted by mdonley at 10:23 PM on July 22, 2007

Virtually all of the usages you will see in print stem from a style guide, such as the A.P. style guide. If the style guide says to use it that way, you'll see editors writing it that way.

Style guides have their own, somewhat complex, logic for naming conventions, and they're all different.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 10:32 PM on July 22, 2007

Best answer: We tend not to have a reason to say either "the first man president" or "the first male president" very often.

That has nothing to do with the question, which is about why we use "male" rather than "man" as the adjective when it is applicable. For example, we say "male nurse"; we would never say "man nurse."

I agree with the suggestion by some others that "female" is avoided because of the traditional view that "male" and "female" refer to animals. (Incidentally, I've never understood that reasoning; won't context always make it clear when you're referring to humans?) But this doesn't explain why we use "male."

Maybe "man" just sounds wrong as a modifier because it's more brusque than the word "woman." We already have many words and phrases beginning with "man": "man alive," "man overboard," "manhole." This might cause "man" to seem, somehow, crude as an adjective, in a way that "woman" isn't.
posted by jejune at 10:50 PM on July 22, 2007

Best answer: Maybe "man" just sounds wrong as a modifier because it's more brusque than the word "woman." We already have many words and phrases beginning with "man": "man alive," "man overboard," "manhole." This might cause "man" to seem, somehow, crude as an adjective, in a way that "woman" isn't.

This might also be because we use the word "man" to mean humans as a whole. So it's usage would be confusing. When we say "First man in space" we are also saying "First human in space" or take phrases such as "The achievements of man" which my also include what women have done.
posted by vacapinta at 11:15 PM on July 22, 2007

Best answer: I think it has less to do with the terms "woman" vs. "man" and more to do with using "female" vs. "woman".

Historically, cases where somebody was a pioneer in some field/ability it was often a man leading that charge, and so the gender was assumed to be male, and therefore was unspecified. Ex. "The first person to do ___", or "The first president of ___". So when women started accomplishing these feats, there may have been no strong linguistic paradigm ("female X" from "male X") to follow. Compound that with the term "female" having a more scientific connotation, whereas "woman" seems more culturally respectable/human. For phrases where woman/female occurs, it would likely be more important to avoid the subtly derogatory interpretation than it is to follow the preexisting paradigm.

This all could be way off base, or could be right on, or could be a small reason among many others as to why these phrases emerged the way they did.

In a way, it's kind of similar to the current "problem" we have with the second person plural gap in American English dialects. Currently, there is no one expression that seems to be dominating the dialects and spreading outward, so you go to various places and you hear "you all" or you's" or "youts" or "you guys" or "thems". Until something strong emerges, other phrases that may want to lean on and copy that structure will be in disarray as well. Or not...those spinoff phrases might find and establish their pattern based on other factors (positive connotation, mellifluous sound, etc.).

Language is fluid and ever-changing, and has its own seemingly illogical reasons for doing so.
posted by iamkimiam at 11:25 PM on July 22, 2007 [2 favorites]

vacapinta also brings up a really good point.
posted by iamkimiam at 11:26 PM on July 22, 2007

I think iamkimiam has it -- the expression "woman X" is generally used where there is an assumption that "X" is a man. Hence "woman president".

Because of the nature of our society, it's harder to think of examples of men doing traditionally female roles, but the rule seems to work the other way, too. So, for instance, "man midwife" sounds fine. The "man nurse" is the subject of scholarly writing.
posted by robcorr at 12:33 AM on July 23, 2007

Despite what many feminists would say, "man", when it isn't discussing a particular person, really is a gender neutral term for 'human.' Hense, it is appositional to something that is not human, such as a machine or animal. For example 'man-made,' or 'are we mice or are we men?'

The first 'man president' would, to me, imply that all the others had been giraffes or robots or something.
posted by blenderfish at 1:40 AM on July 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

So, for instance, "man midwife" sounds fine. The "man nurse" is the subject of scholarly writing.

So is male nurse: 4,800 articles. Man nurse gets 135 hits.

That being said, Man midwife beats out male midwife by about 3 to 1, and all of the top articles for male midwife refer to the male, Midwife Toad. The ratio on google is even more lopsided: 17k+ for "man midwife" vs 840 for "male midwife."

So it looks like there are no clear rules on this. To my ears, "man midwife" sounds weird, but so does "woman president."

I think this definitely calls for some kind of linguistic analysis. Incidentally, on google "female president" beats out "woman president" by 2:1, so maybe this rule isn't even a rule.

A friend of mine is doing (did?) her dissertation on compound nouns in English, so if the discussion gets really bad I can always get her input added here.
posted by Deathalicious at 1:45 AM on July 23, 2007

As noted above, "woman" is a noun, not an adjective. "Woman doctor" sounds terrible to my ears. Don't compound nouns usually have a hyphen between them? I mean, what are you, some kind of ape-man? dog-killer? Language-hat?

So I could see "Woman-president" but isn't that a tad weird?
posted by dreamsign at 5:36 AM on July 23, 2007

For example, we say "male nurse"; we would never say "man nurse."

That's an ambiguous expression. Are we talking about a nurse for men, like a man-date or man-purse? Or are we talking about a nurse who is a man? Man midwife at least is unambiguous until we achieve some more technological miracles.

Likewise, we might say a woman president but a female doctor, because a woman doctor might be an MD with ovaries, or might be an MD of ovaries.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:51 AM on July 23, 2007

William Safire wrote about this a while back (NYT pay link). The gist is that "female" sounds more biological, and thus less respectful:

Deborah Tannen, professor of linguistics at Georgetown University and author of 'You're Wearing THAT? Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation,' gets that sense, too: 'We're hearing woman as an adjective more often now. Female connotes a biological category. I think many feminists avoid it for the same reason they prefer gender to sex. . . . I avoid female in my own writing because it feels disrespectful, as if I'm treating the people I'm referring to as mammals but not humans.'

Googling woman vs. female brings up lots of other links on the subject.
posted by myeviltwin at 6:40 AM on July 23, 2007

Because man often refers to "human" also. So if we were to say, "the first man hoop-jumper" might also seeming refer to (or potentially be misunderstood as) being the first hoop-jumper who is a human, previously held by say, lions. "Woman" rarely, if ever, refers to a human generic where gender/sex is not pertinent to context.
posted by vanoakenfold at 7:42 AM on July 23, 2007

I've always hated the use of female for both stylistic and emotional reasons. It sounds weird to use female as a noun when it's really an adjective. A female what?

I had a boss once who was always talking about females. "You females love shopping, don't you?" It made me want to punch him out.
posted by frosty_hut at 7:45 AM on July 23, 2007

Response by poster: The hive mind is fabulous. I never thought that "female" was more scientific, nor have I ever been offended by it. I suppose I'll have to learn to live with reading "first women ..."

frosty_hut I think your ex-boss is just a knob. "you womens love shopping, don't you?" would piss me off too.
posted by captaincrouton at 9:16 AM on July 23, 2007

Hearing "woman" used as an adjective has always made me cringe at the speaker's ignorance of grammar.

Evidently, my use of "female" is making others cringe at the... clinicalness? But it sounds much better to my ears. I don't understand how "woman" became the norm -- it stands atrocious.
posted by timepiece at 10:17 AM on July 23, 2007

Using female as an adjective doesn't bother me, because it is an appropriate use of the word, but I can live with the "woman x" construction, I guess.

But using female as a noun when referring to a woman just sounds odd. I don't think the vast majority of men who use the term mean to offend in any way. In fact, it's kind of gawkily charming when, say, a 17 year old geeky guy uses it. But if a man keeps saying "females" instead of "women" as the chosen noun once he grows up a bit, that's usually a pretty good marker of some cluelessness or social awkwardness that could turn off some women. (No, not everyone who uses "female" is socially awkward, and some guys may still make a good impression nonetheless. But most of the time, it's a verbal quirk that will really annoy a fair number of women.)
posted by maudlin at 11:48 AM on July 23, 2007

Cool Papa Bell may be correct. Until the 2007 edition, the A.P. stylebook suggested "woman" instead of "female". I would assume lots of reporters and such would refer to the A.P. book.

(Not a self link, I just remember seeing it)
posted by bkudria at 4:41 PM on July 23, 2007

The funniest standardized dichotomy I know is categorizing figure skaters as "men" and "ladies"*. This inevitably leads to such ridiculous oxymorons as "junior men" and "junior ladies."

Shades of Emily and Florence on blades!
*The reasoning apparently is that while the young males competing tend to be post-pubescent, the average female skater is barely a teenager, but referring to "girls" would seem condescending, however accurate. Using "women" would seem laughably inapt and "females" clinical, so "ladies" becomes the default solution.
posted by rob511 at 2:10 PM on October 2, 2007