Changing ‘man made language’: Sexist language and feminist linguistic activism in Australia

‘By the mid-seventies’, wrote American feminist scholar Alette Olin Hill in 1986, ‘there were many female voices being raised against the tyranny of patriarchal Loud Mouths. Language itself was being examined as both an instrument of oppression and as a possible tool of liberation’.1 Language became a significant concern for the international feminist movement through the 1970s. Efforts were made to investigate the gendered nature of language, campaigns were waged to change popular understandings of sexism in language and, ultimately, style and usage guides were designed that aimed to transform language at the institutional as well as the personal level. Australia actively participated in this international debate about sexist language, and campaigns to change language usage were waged in Australia.