Gender neutral terms such as ‘birth-givers’ may put women’s health at risk, researchers warn

Introducing terms such as “birth-givers” is “rapid and extreme” in the UK and risks dehumanising women, leading medical researchers have warned.

Women’s health researchers from across the world have said in a paper to be published this week that changing language in order to be inclusive of transgender people can have “unintended consequences that have serious implications”.

It comes as NHS Trusts, health charities, academics and government departments have all faced criticism for introducing gender neutral terms like “birth-givers” and “chestfeeding” alongside traditional descriptions such as “mothers” and “breastfeeding”

The authors of the paper, due to be published in the journal Frontiers in Global Women’s Health, warn that the move could harm decades of work attempting to improve gender bias in medicine which research has found is putting women’s health at risk.

The paper states: “Desexing the language of female reproduction has been done with a view to being sensitive to individual needs and beneficial, kind and inclusive.

“Yet, this kindness has delivered unintended consequences that have serious implications for women and children.”

The leading women’s health researchers, from institutions including King’s College and Harvard, say that the consequences could include “decreasing overall inclusivity” and “dehumanising” women.

Referring to pregnant women as “‘gestational carrier’ or ‘birther’ marginalises their humanity” and harks back to “sexist” ideas of women as failed men, they note.

It also “works against the plain language principle of health communication and risks reducing inclusivity for vulnerable groups by making communications more difficult to understand”.

They note that the terminology can also be confusing, adding: “What does the phrase ‘women and birthing people’ actually mean? This construction could be interpreted in a literal way as meaning that ‘women’ are not people.”

Professor Jenny Gamble, one of ten authors on the paper, said that gender identity should not be confused with biological sex as it could lead to “health consequences and deeper and more insidious discrimination against women”.

The midwifery professor at the Centre for Care Excellence at Coventry University told the Sydney Morning Herald that the trend to erase the word women had started to sweep the world and “the way the UK has moved to erase the use of sexed language has been rapid and extreme”.

Activists have long called for the removal of gendered language from public life in order to be inclusive of transgender people.

But the paper says that whilst “the individual’s preferred terminology for themselves and their body parts should be used wherever possible”, pregnant women and new mothers “have unique vulnerabilities and also require protection”.

The authors note that “desexing language in relation to males occurs less frequently”.

Whilst focusing on childbirth and motherhood, the authors note that the issues are “relevant to other situations where sex is central, including: domestic violence, sexual assault, sex-selective abortion and infanticide, female genital mutilation, and reproductive cancers and other sex-specific conditions”.

‘Women’ disappear into ‘people’

It comes after an investigation by The Telegraph found that Stonewall had been advising employers that they must remove all gendered language from their policies and to replace terms such as mother with “parent who has given birth”.

Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals (BSUH) NHS Trust last year became the first in the country to formally implement a gender inclusive language policy for its maternity services department – now known as “perinatal services”.

A list of alternative terms to use when addressing trans women patients – including “mothers or birthing parents”, “breast/chestfeeding”,“maternal and parental” and “human milk” – were circulated to all staff.

The authors of the article conclude that: “In the midst of the current move to desex language, we argue that if women and mothers are not named, it makes it more difficult to effectively advocate for them; ‘women’ disappear into ‘people’ and ‘mothers’ disappear into ‘parents.’ This inevitably changes the focus.”