Gendering occupations
persistence and resistance of gender presumptions about members of particular healthcare professions
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.24082Keywords:
Conversation Analysis (CA), gender presumptions, person reference, categorisation, healthcare interactionsAbstract
In spite of increasing gender diversity in employment roles, presumptions persist about the gender of people employed in particular occupations. Focusing on healthcare data collected in Australia and the United Kingdom within the past decade, we use conversation analysis to identify how presumptions about gender are displayed within social interaction through the use of gender-specific pronouns. We show how gender-specific pronouns are asymmetrically selected on the basis of a referent’s occupations, with gender-unspecified members of traditionally male occupations (e.g. doctors) referred to with masculine pronouns and gender-unspecified members of traditionally female occupations (e.g. nurses) referred to with feminine pronouns. We also explore ways people avoid making such presumptions. Our analysis therefore reveals a state of flux in contemporary social life, with instances in which gender presumptions persist as well as attempts to employ person references that reflect contemporary social dynamics.
References
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Balhorn, M. (2004) The rise of epicene they. Journal of English Linguistics 32(2): 79–104. https://doi.org/10.1177/0075424204265824
Baranowski, M. (2002) Current usage of the epicene pronoun in written English. Journal of Sociolinguistics 6(3): 378–97. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9481.00193
Bodine, A. (1975) Androcentrism in prescriptive grammar: singular ‘they’, sex-indefinite ‘he’, and ‘he or she’. Language in Society 4(2): 129–46. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500004607
Bucholtz, M. (2003) Theories of discourse as theories of gender: discourse analysis in language and gender studies. In J. Holmes and M. Meyerhoff (eds) The Handbook of Language and Gender 43–68. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470756942.ch2
Coetzee, J. M. (1999) Disgrace. London: Secker & Warburg.
Deech, R. (2009) Women Doctors: Making a Difference. Report of the Chair of the National Working Group on Women in Medicine. London: Department of Health. Retrieved on 14 January 2014 from https://tinyurl.com/hltjdkx.
Ekberg, K., Grenness, C. and Hickson, L. (2014) Addressing patients’ psychosocial concerns regarding hearing aids within audiology appointments for older adults. American Journal of Audiology 23: 337–50. https://doi.org/10.1044/2014_AJA-14-0011
Ekberg, S. (2014) Maintaining shared knowledge of acquaintance: methods people use to establish who knows whom. British Journal of Social Psychology 53(4): 605–21. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12050
Ekberg, S., Barnes, R., Kessler, D., Malpass, A. and Shaw, A. (2013) Managing the therapeutic relationship in online cognitive behavioural therapy for depression: therapists’ treatment of clients’ contributions. Language@Internet 10(4): urn:nbn:de:0009-7-36986.
Fitzgerald, R., Housley, W. and Butler, C. W. (2009) Omnirelevance and interactional context. Australian Journal of Communication 36(3): 45–64.
Garfinkel, H. (1967) Studies in Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
GMC (2014) List of registered medical practitioners: statistics. Retrieved on 14 January 2014 from www.gmc-uk.org/doctors/register/search_stats.asp.
Goffman, E. (1976) Gender display. Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication 3: 69–77. https://doi.org/10.1525/var.1976.3.2.69
Goffman, E. (1977) The arrangement between the sexes. Theory and Society 4(3): 301–31. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00206983
Grenness, C., Hickson, L., Laplante-Lévesque, A., Meyer, C. and Davidson, B. (2015) The nature of communication throughout diagnosis and management planning in initial audiologic rehabilitation consultations. Journal of the American Academy of Audiology 26(1): 36–50. https://doi.org/10.3766/jaaa.26.1.5
Heritage, J. (2007) Intersubjectivity and progressivity in person (and place) reference. In N. J. Enfield and T. Stivers (eds) Person Reference in Interaction: Linguistic, Cultural and Social Perspectives 255–80. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Hopper, R. and LeBaron, C. (1998) How gender creeps into talk. Research on Language and Social Interaction 31(1): 59–74. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327973rlsi3101_4
Jackson, C. (2011) The gendered ‘I’. In Speer and Stokoe (2011b): 31–47. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511781032.003
Jefferson, G. (1983) On exposed and embedded correction in conversation. Studium Linguistik 14: 58–68.
Jefferson, G. (2004a) Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In G. Lerner (ed.) Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation 13–31. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.125.02jef
Jefferson, G. (2004b) A note on laughter in ‘male–female’ interaction. Discourse Studies 6(1): 117–33. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445604039445
Kessler, S. J. and McKenna, W. (1978) Gender: An Ethomethodological Approach. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Kitzinger, C. (2005) Heteronormativity in action: reproducing the heterosexual nuclear family in after-hours medical calls. Social Problems 52(4): 477–98. https://doi.org/10.1525/sp.2005.52.4.477
Kitzinger, C. (2006) After post-cognitivism. Discourse Studies 8(1): 67–83. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445606059556
Kitzinger, C. (2007) Is ‘woman’ always relevantly gendered? Gender and Language 1(1): 39–49. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.2007.1.1.39
Klein, N. L. (2011) Doing gender categorization: non-recognitional person reference and the omnirelevance of gender. In Speer and Stokoe (2011b): 64–82.
Land, V. and Kitzinger, C. (2005) Speaking as a lesbian: correcting the heterosexist presumption. Research on Language and Social Interaction 38(4): 371–416. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327973rlsi3804_1
Leydon, G. M., Ekberg, K. and Drew, P. (2013) ‘How can I help?’ Nurse call openings on a cancer helpline and implications for call progressivity. Patient Education and Counseling 92(1): 23–30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2013.02.007
Newman, M. (1992) Pronominal disagreements: the stubborn problem of singular epicene antecedents. Language in Society 21(3): 447–75. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500015529
NMC (2008) Statistical Analysis of the Register: 1 April 2007 to 31 March 2008. London: Nursing and Midwifery Council. Accessed on 14 January 2014 from https://tinyurl.com/z783mrw.
Sacks, H. (1972a) An initial investigation of the usability of conversational data for doing sociology. In D. Sudnow (ed.) Studies in Social Interaction 31–74. New York: Free Press.
Sacks, H. (1972b) On the analyzability of stories by children. In J. J. Gumperz and D. Hymes (eds) Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication 325–45. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Sacks, H. (1992) Lectures on Conversation (ed. G. Jefferson). Oxford: Blackwell.
Schegloff, E. A. (1996) Some practices for referring to persons in talk-in-interaction: aaaa partial sketch of a systematics. In B. Fox (ed.) Studies in Anaphora 437–85. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.33.14sch
Schegloff, E. A. (1997) Whose text? Whose context? Discourse and Society 8(2): 165–87. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926597008002002
Schegloff, E. A. (2007a) Categories in action: person-reference and membership categorization. Discourse Studies 9(4): 433–61. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445607079162
Schegloff, E. A. (2007b) A tutorial on membership categorization. Journal of Pragmatics 39(3): 462–82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2006.07.007
Schegloff, E. A., Jefferson, G. and Sacks, H. (1977) The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language 53(2): 361–82. https://doi.org/10.2307/413107
Sidnell, J. (2010) Conversation Analysis: An Introduction. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Siewierska, A. (2013) Gender distinctions in independent personal pronouns. In M. S. Dryer and M. Haspelmath (eds) The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Retrieved on 14 January 2014 from http://wals.info/chapter/44.
Speer, S. A. and Stokoe, E. (2011a) An introduction to conversation and gender. In Speer and Stokoe (2011b): 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511781032.002
Speer, S. A. and Stokoe, E. (eds) (2011b) Conversation and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stivers, T., Enfield, N. J. and Levinson, S. C. (2007) Person reference in interaction. In N. J. Enfield and T. Stivers (eds) Person Reference in Interaction: Linguistic, Cultural, and Social Perspectives 1–20. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stokoe, E. H. (1998) Talking about gender: the conversational construction of gender categories in academic discourse. Discourse and Society 9(2): 217–40. 09002005
https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926598009002005
Stokoe, E. (2006) On ethnomethodology, feminism, and the analysis of categorial reference to gender in talk-in-interaction. The Sociological Review 54(3): 467–94. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2006.00626.x
Stokoe, E. (2011) ‘Girl – woman – sorry!’ On the repair and non-repair of consecutive gender categories. In Speer and Stokoe (2011b): 85–111. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511781032.006
Stokoe, E. (2012) Moving forward with membership categorization analysis: methods for systematic analysis. Discourse Studies 14(3): 277–303. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445612441534
Stringer, J. L. and Hopper, R. (1998) Generic he in conversation? Quarterly Journal of Speech 84(2): 209–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/00335639809384214
Weatherall, A. (2002) Towards understanding gender and talk-in-interaction. Discourse and Society 13(6): 767–81. ttps://doi.org/10.1177/0957926502013006756
West, C. and Zimmerman, D. H. (1987) Doing gender. Gender and Society 1(2): 125–51. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243287001002002
Zuber, S. and Reed, A. M. (1993) The politics of grammar handbooks: generic he and singular they. College English 55(5): 515–30. https://doi.org/10.2307/378587
AIHW (2013b) Nursing and Midwifery Workforce. National Health Workforce Series no. 6. Canberra: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Retrieved on 14 January 2014 from www.aihw.gov.au/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=60129545314.
Balhorn, M. (2004) The rise of epicene they. Journal of English Linguistics 32(2): 79–104. https://doi.org/10.1177/0075424204265824
Baranowski, M. (2002) Current usage of the epicene pronoun in written English. Journal of Sociolinguistics 6(3): 378–97. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9481.00193
Bodine, A. (1975) Androcentrism in prescriptive grammar: singular ‘they’, sex-indefinite ‘he’, and ‘he or she’. Language in Society 4(2): 129–46. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500004607
Bucholtz, M. (2003) Theories of discourse as theories of gender: discourse analysis in language and gender studies. In J. Holmes and M. Meyerhoff (eds) The Handbook of Language and Gender 43–68. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470756942.ch2
Coetzee, J. M. (1999) Disgrace. London: Secker & Warburg.
Deech, R. (2009) Women Doctors: Making a Difference. Report of the Chair of the National Working Group on Women in Medicine. London: Department of Health. Retrieved on 14 January 2014 from https://tinyurl.com/hltjdkx.
Ekberg, K., Grenness, C. and Hickson, L. (2014) Addressing patients’ psychosocial concerns regarding hearing aids within audiology appointments for older adults. American Journal of Audiology 23: 337–50. https://doi.org/10.1044/2014_AJA-14-0011
Ekberg, S. (2014) Maintaining shared knowledge of acquaintance: methods people use to establish who knows whom. British Journal of Social Psychology 53(4): 605–21. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12050
Ekberg, S., Barnes, R., Kessler, D., Malpass, A. and Shaw, A. (2013) Managing the therapeutic relationship in online cognitive behavioural therapy for depression: therapists’ treatment of clients’ contributions. Language@Internet 10(4): urn:nbn:de:0009-7-36986.
Fitzgerald, R., Housley, W. and Butler, C. W. (2009) Omnirelevance and interactional context. Australian Journal of Communication 36(3): 45–64.
Garfinkel, H. (1967) Studies in Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
GMC (2014) List of registered medical practitioners: statistics. Retrieved on 14 January 2014 from www.gmc-uk.org/doctors/register/search_stats.asp.
Goffman, E. (1976) Gender display. Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication 3: 69–77. https://doi.org/10.1525/var.1976.3.2.69
Goffman, E. (1977) The arrangement between the sexes. Theory and Society 4(3): 301–31. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00206983
Grenness, C., Hickson, L., Laplante-Lévesque, A., Meyer, C. and Davidson, B. (2015) The nature of communication throughout diagnosis and management planning in initial audiologic rehabilitation consultations. Journal of the American Academy of Audiology 26(1): 36–50. https://doi.org/10.3766/jaaa.26.1.5
Heritage, J. (2007) Intersubjectivity and progressivity in person (and place) reference. In N. J. Enfield and T. Stivers (eds) Person Reference in Interaction: Linguistic, Cultural and Social Perspectives 255–80. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Hopper, R. and LeBaron, C. (1998) How gender creeps into talk. Research on Language and Social Interaction 31(1): 59–74. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327973rlsi3101_4
Jackson, C. (2011) The gendered ‘I’. In Speer and Stokoe (2011b): 31–47. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511781032.003
Jefferson, G. (1983) On exposed and embedded correction in conversation. Studium Linguistik 14: 58–68.
Jefferson, G. (2004a) Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In G. Lerner (ed.) Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation 13–31. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.125.02jef
Jefferson, G. (2004b) A note on laughter in ‘male–female’ interaction. Discourse Studies 6(1): 117–33. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445604039445
Kessler, S. J. and McKenna, W. (1978) Gender: An Ethomethodological Approach. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Kitzinger, C. (2005) Heteronormativity in action: reproducing the heterosexual nuclear family in after-hours medical calls. Social Problems 52(4): 477–98. https://doi.org/10.1525/sp.2005.52.4.477
Kitzinger, C. (2006) After post-cognitivism. Discourse Studies 8(1): 67–83. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445606059556
Kitzinger, C. (2007) Is ‘woman’ always relevantly gendered? Gender and Language 1(1): 39–49. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.2007.1.1.39
Klein, N. L. (2011) Doing gender categorization: non-recognitional person reference and the omnirelevance of gender. In Speer and Stokoe (2011b): 64–82.
Land, V. and Kitzinger, C. (2005) Speaking as a lesbian: correcting the heterosexist presumption. Research on Language and Social Interaction 38(4): 371–416. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327973rlsi3804_1
Leydon, G. M., Ekberg, K. and Drew, P. (2013) ‘How can I help?’ Nurse call openings on a cancer helpline and implications for call progressivity. Patient Education and Counseling 92(1): 23–30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2013.02.007
Newman, M. (1992) Pronominal disagreements: the stubborn problem of singular epicene antecedents. Language in Society 21(3): 447–75. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500015529
NMC (2008) Statistical Analysis of the Register: 1 April 2007 to 31 March 2008. London: Nursing and Midwifery Council. Accessed on 14 January 2014 from https://tinyurl.com/z783mrw.
Sacks, H. (1972a) An initial investigation of the usability of conversational data for doing sociology. In D. Sudnow (ed.) Studies in Social Interaction 31–74. New York: Free Press.
Sacks, H. (1972b) On the analyzability of stories by children. In J. J. Gumperz and D. Hymes (eds) Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication 325–45. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Sacks, H. (1992) Lectures on Conversation (ed. G. Jefferson). Oxford: Blackwell.
Schegloff, E. A. (1996) Some practices for referring to persons in talk-in-interaction: aaaa partial sketch of a systematics. In B. Fox (ed.) Studies in Anaphora 437–85. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.33.14sch
Schegloff, E. A. (1997) Whose text? Whose context? Discourse and Society 8(2): 165–87. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926597008002002
Schegloff, E. A. (2007a) Categories in action: person-reference and membership categorization. Discourse Studies 9(4): 433–61. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445607079162
Schegloff, E. A. (2007b) A tutorial on membership categorization. Journal of Pragmatics 39(3): 462–82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2006.07.007
Schegloff, E. A., Jefferson, G. and Sacks, H. (1977) The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language 53(2): 361–82. https://doi.org/10.2307/413107
Sidnell, J. (2010) Conversation Analysis: An Introduction. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Siewierska, A. (2013) Gender distinctions in independent personal pronouns. In M. S. Dryer and M. Haspelmath (eds) The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Retrieved on 14 January 2014 from http://wals.info/chapter/44.
Speer, S. A. and Stokoe, E. (2011a) An introduction to conversation and gender. In Speer and Stokoe (2011b): 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511781032.002
Speer, S. A. and Stokoe, E. (eds) (2011b) Conversation and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stivers, T., Enfield, N. J. and Levinson, S. C. (2007) Person reference in interaction. In N. J. Enfield and T. Stivers (eds) Person Reference in Interaction: Linguistic, Cultural, and Social Perspectives 1–20. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stokoe, E. H. (1998) Talking about gender: the conversational construction of gender categories in academic discourse. Discourse and Society 9(2): 217–40. 09002005
https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926598009002005
Stokoe, E. (2006) On ethnomethodology, feminism, and the analysis of categorial reference to gender in talk-in-interaction. The Sociological Review 54(3): 467–94. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2006.00626.x
Stokoe, E. (2011) ‘Girl – woman – sorry!’ On the repair and non-repair of consecutive gender categories. In Speer and Stokoe (2011b): 85–111. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511781032.006
Stokoe, E. (2012) Moving forward with membership categorization analysis: methods for systematic analysis. Discourse Studies 14(3): 277–303. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445612441534
Stringer, J. L. and Hopper, R. (1998) Generic he in conversation? Quarterly Journal of Speech 84(2): 209–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/00335639809384214
Weatherall, A. (2002) Towards understanding gender and talk-in-interaction. Discourse and Society 13(6): 767–81. ttps://doi.org/10.1177/0957926502013006756
West, C. and Zimmerman, D. H. (1987) Doing gender. Gender and Society 1(2): 125–51. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243287001002002
Zuber, S. and Reed, A. M. (1993) The politics of grammar handbooks: generic he and singular they. College English 55(5): 515–30. https://doi.org/10.2307/378587
Published
2017-03-28
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Ekberg, K., & Ekberg, S. (2017). Gendering occupations: persistence and resistance of gender presumptions about members of particular healthcare professions. Gender and Language, 11(1), 100-120. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.24082
