Gender-specific and gender-neutral pronouns
A
gender-specific pronoun is a pronoun associated with a particular gender, such as a pronoun denoting female or male. Examples include the English third-person personal pronouns
he and
she. A
gender-neutral pronoun, by contrast, is a pronoun that is not associated with a particular gender, and that does not imply male or female. Many English pronouns are gender-neutral, including
they. Many of the world's languages do not have gender-specific pronouns. Others, however – particularly those which have a pervasive system of grammatical gender – have gender-specificity in certain of their pronouns, particularly personal pronouns of the third person. Problems of usage arise in languages such as English, in contexts where a person of unspecified or unknown sex is being referred to, but the most natural available pronouns are gender-specific. In such cases a gender-specific pronoun may be used with intended gender-neutral meaning, as
he has been used traditionally in English, although
she is now sometimes used instead. Use of singular
they is another common alternative.