From Monday until the end of the week, the feminine will become the norm. From now on, we'll be talking about female university students instead of male students, and female professors instead of male professors. Rather than the masculine, the feminine is chosen to represent each and every one of us. The experiment aims to encourage "collective reflection on linguistic norms and their impact on the sense of belonging and collective representations", explains UCLouvain.

Numerous studies have shown that the use of a generic masculine gender leads us to think in masculine terms: when we speak of engineers or computer scientists, the brain imagines men. "If we regularly mention the name women engineers when referring to this profession, it will have a positive impact on the feminization of thisfield of study.minization of this field of study", stresses inclusive writing specialist Anne-Catherine Simon. Some fields are still the preserve of men. However, "when job names are formulated in both genders ('become a coder'), young women's feeling of motivation or competence to take up these professions is increased", illustrates the linguist from UCLouvain. It's also a question of "communicating inclusively when addressing groups made up of women and men, or people who identify as non-binary", continues the university. The challenge is to write texts that are legible, fluid but also inclusive and that do not invisibilize anyone.

"Fora few days, UCLouvain wants to encourage everyone to 'decentralize' and personally experience the effect of using a gender such as 'neutral' to refer to people who are not binary.neutral' to refer to people of the other gender", sums up Sébastien Van Drooghenbroeck, prorector for equity, diversity and inclusion.

Source: www.rtbf.be/