Effects of the generic use of the masculine pronoun and alternative forms of speech on the cognitive visibility of women

Feminist linguistics have postulated that a masculine pronoun that is used in a generic sense ("he" to indicate a male or female doctor) facilitates t he cognitive representation of a man compared to a woman and therefore make s women less visible. Several experimental studies have confirmed Us assump tion with regard to the English language. Concerning the German language th is question has been addressed only in very few studies. Four experiments a re presented that were conducted in Germany to determine the influence of l anguage variations when using nouns (generic masculine: Studenten; neutral: Studierende; feminine-masculine pairs: Studentinnen und Studenten; and cap ital "I" forms: StudentInnen) on the cognitive representation of women. Con sistently over studies, in the generic masculine condition we found a lower visibility of women than in the alternative language conditions "feminine- masculine pairs" and "capital I" (e.g., lower numbers of female favorite pu blic figures or female candidates for the chancellor position in Germany).