Feminatives are not a given. How Polish women talk about their professions

illustration: DALL-E

Translation supported by Google Gemini

Today, feminatives can be heard in media, seen in job ads, or read in photo captions. But do Polish women use them when talking about themselves? Researchers from SWPS University checked this. They are Magda Leszko from the Center for Research on Social Relations and Dr. Hab., Prof. USWPS Magdalena Formanowicz, a psychologist and head of the Center for Research on Social Relations.

The report presents a continuation of research on how often Polish women (do not) use female job titles. In the second wave, researchers invited both new people and participants from the previous wave. This allowed them to check whether using feminatives remains stable over time.

Feminatives in Poland are still not an obvious choice

In many countries, such as Germany, feminatives are used daily. Women who use male forms are even rated as less competent due to incorrect language use.


In Poland, the situation is slightly different. Although support for these forms is theoretically high, the use of feminatives remains low. Results showed that the use of feminatives by women is rare among working women, but common in social roles unrelated to job activity, such as "unemployed woman", "retiree", or "female student".

• In two survey waves conducted in 2023 and 2024 by the Center for Research on Social Relations at SWPS University, about one third of working women used female job titles to describe their professional role, such as "female psychologist" instead of "psychologist".
• In the second wave, 32.9 percent of professionally active women used female forms, while the rest chose male forms.
• Among professionally inactive women, the percentage of feminatives was twice as high at 63.3 percent.

On one hand, working women may use feminatives less often for fear of losing prestige. In many professional circles, people still believe that female job titles sound less serious. Therefore, women choose male forms as safer options that guarantee a professional image, comments Magda Leszko from the Center for Research on Social Relations, one of the authors of the report. On the other hand, it may simply be a matter of cognitive availability. Terms like "female student" or "female retiree" are well established in Polish, unlike specialized job titles like "female architect" or "female manager". The barrier might not be personal dislike, but the power of linguistic habit.

In the first wave, working women who felt a strong bond with other women, known as high identification, used female forms more often. In the second wave, however, researchers observed no clear link between identification with women and the choice of language form for self-description.

This means that even women who strongly identify with their gender rarely use feminatives in the workplace, point out the authors of the report.

Choice of form is not always constant

• About 77 percent of women remained consistent and used the same forms in both waves. If they used "I am a teacher" in the male form in the first wave, they stayed with the male form a year later, and the same applied to users of female forms.
• However, 23 percent decided to change, and for 13 percent of them, this was linked to a change in employment status.

Researchers noted that women who started working between waves shifted from female to male forms, such as moving from "I am a female student" to "I am a marketing specialist" in the male form. Meanwhile, women who stopped working started using feminatives more often, such as "I am a female retiree".

The authors of the study note that male forms dominate the workplace. This confirms earlier results showing that in a professional setting, women may fear potential criticism or stereotypes linked to feminatives.

Researchers point out that forms like "female psychologist" or "female manager" may still be perceived as less natural than commonly used words like "female retiree" or "female student". Therefore, the use of female forms may depend on how familiar a form is in a specific context, not just on individual beliefs.

A total of 916 women took part in the first wave of the study, and 509 women participated in the second wave, 408 of whom also took part in the first. The authors of the report are Dr. Hab., Prof. USWPS Magdalena Formanowicz and Magda Leszko. The publication is available on this page.