Feminine role nouns: A focus on Romanian and English

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to shed some light on the influence of gender stereotypes and the role played by the prestige of professions in evaluating the role of nouns. The study looks at two languages that differ in their encoding of gender – English (a semantic gender language) and Romanian (a grammatical gender language). Four experimental studies were developed. The results confirm our main hypotheses: 1. gender stereotypes play a crucial part in evaluating role nouns; 2. the masculine form is used for more prestigious professions, while the feminine form is primarily used for stereotypically feminine, less prestigious role nouns.