Gendering: 52 percent never formulate in a gender-neutral way

Almost a third have never heard of gender-neutral language, and the topic is probably most important for young women. 62 percent – that’s six percentage points more than in 2016 – have heard of gender-neutral language, 32 percent have not, and six percent don’t know. In any case, gender is not being used diligently: 52 percent said they never use gender-neutral language, 12 percent said “rarely” and “sometimes” and only four percent said “always”.

Opinion poll: What is your stance on gender?

Specifically, the 1,025 Austrians personally interviewed in January and February were asked whether “these initiatives (for gender-appropriate language, note) and the associated changes in the German language, for example through the use of all gender groups using a colon, which also includes personal designations between the male and female, for example ‘students’, are all in all developing in the right direction.” In 2016, 27 percent answered yes, but this year it was only 19 percent. In contrast, the number of those who rejected the idea rose from 46 to 63 percent.

65 percent of respondents think that gender-neutral language is not important for strengthening all gender groups in our society, 25 percent do. In general, women and those with higher levels of education think this is somewhat more important than men and people with lower levels of formal education. However, the gap between young and older women is particularly striking: while 33 percent of women under 50 think gender is important, only 20 percent of women over 50 do so. The latter are therefore more skeptical about gender-neutral language than men, with 25 (young) and 23 (old) percent.

Practical experiment

The pollsters also subjected their test subjects to a practical experiment: One half was asked to spontaneously name well-known athletes, politicians and pop musicians, while the other half was asked to name “male and female athletes”, “male and female politicians”, etc. Conclusion: The names mentioned hardly differed between the two groups.