It’s been a cherished belief of progressives over the decades that you change the way we think, and in turn transform society, by changing the kind of language we use. This stretches back to a 1980s strand of feminism determined to jettison default masculine terms such as ‘chairman’ and ‘headmaster’ and replace them with gender-neutral equivalents. Then there are today’s hyper-liberals, who believe they can erase binary thinking on sex by introducing expressions such as ‘pregnant people’ or forgo ‘he’ and ‘she’ altogether and substitute everywhere with ‘they’. Many radicals have imagined that linguistic revolution is essential to actual revolution.

Unfortunately for these idealists, new research suggests that their faith has been misplaced. According to a study by behavioural economists at Exeter university, introducing gender-inclusive language in the workplace has no impact on behaviour and on its own will do nothing to advance women at work. Their findings were based on a study using over 2,000 volunteers in Britain and Austria, in which three groups were given an identical task couched in language ranging from strongly masculine to equally balanced. When it came to substituting gender-inclusive language, it concluded, researchers ‘could not find its use in English and........

© The Spectator