About Gender

Most nouns ending in “a” are feminine, as violeta.

Nouns ending in umbre, as muchedumbre, “crowd,” and incertidumbre, ”uncertainty”; and those ending in ión, as television and ocupación are also feminine.

Most nouns ending in “o” are masculine. For example: escritorio, "desk," carro, "car," and banco.

Occupations ending in "ista" are neutral. In such cases gender is determined by the articles el, la, “the”; un, una, “a, an.” For example: el taxista, la economista, una pianista, un periodista, “journalist,” el dentista, la accionista, “shareholder,” el contrabandista, “smuggler,” and la columinista.

Most adjectives ending in “e” are also neutral. For example: estudiante and cantante, "singer."

Sexist Plural
Many consider Spanish a sexist language, especially when the plural is concerned, as masculine forms predominate. A student pointed out that she attended a lecture on the contributions women made to linguistics. 90 percent of the participants were women, yet, she recalled angrily, when referring to the group, she had to use the masculine form los participantes.

No more. The language liberation has begun. Freedom fighters neutralized hombre, “man,” as representative of human beings. Sexist expressions such as Los derechos del hombre, “The Rights of Man,” and La historia del hombre, “History of Mankind,” have been transformed to Los derechos humanos and La historia de la humanidad. The masculine plural no longer would comprise men and women. When referring to the citizens of Rome, las romanas must accompany los romanos. U.S. Latinos should translate to las latinas y los latinos de los Estados Unidos. For children of the world we must include las niñas to los niños del mundo or use la niñez.

My student also requested that I stop calling her señorita Smith, “Miss,” since I didn’t address male students as señoritos, “unmarried gentleman.”

I checked with the Spanish Ministry of Social Affairs, the Women’s Institute, and, indeed, from now on señoras should encompass both married and unmarried women as señor, “mister,” does men.

Professional titles, traditionally used in the masculine form, have been feminized, as in doctora, alcaldeza, “mayor,” presidenta and embajadora.

And occupations traditionally relegated to women as enfermeras, “nurses,” secretarias and prostitutas, when expressed in a general sense, should include masculine forms, as in las enfermeras and los efermeros; doctores and doctoras; los ejecutivos and las ejecutivas.

I read an article recently about secretarios and secertarias no longer taking dictation, and another article about how the economic downturn in some countries has more prostitutos and prostitutas walking the streets.