There are conflicting meanings when we talk about gender in the linguistic setting. As I mentioned yesterday, the traditional meaning is "a grammatical category". In most European languages, for example German & French, all nouns are categorised as male or female. For objects, & in some of these languages for people as well (i.e. German), whether the noun is grammatically female or male has no real-world meaning. In other words, the word for "young woman" is grammatically male even though the referent is obviously female.
The other meaning of gender is the more obvious one to the non-linguist, namely the sex of the referent. A mother hyaena is female & so is a young woman.
The reason for this confusion of terms is that in the West, where linguistics flourished (although it was technically invented as a science in India by a scholar named Panini in the distant past), the sex of the referent was believed to equate to its grammatical gender. Indo-European languages anciently distinguished between animate & inanimate things, with an increasing division in the animate category (people, animals) between male animates & female animates by suffixes for the female.
In Latin, for example, there are three genders: male, female & neuter. Neuter mostly contains inanimate objects, & male & female are animate objects usually of the respective sex. As sound changes happened, there was no way to tell the difference between male & neuter nouns, & the daughter languages of Latin, the Romance languages, mostly re-established a two-gender system comprised of the old male & neuter versus the still-distinct old female class. Some words switched gender somewhat randomly, decreasing the absolute connection between a referent's sex & its grammatical category.
In modern Spanish, for example, feminine words take the definite article la, whereas masculine words take el. However, whereas all words have a grammatical gender, not all referents have sex. The fresno tree, for example, is grammatically male. There is no need to try to analyse the biological sex of a fresno before you can talk about it.
In non-European gender systems, for example in Chinese, Japanese & Korean, the gender of a thing might come in to play only when counting: the classic English parallel is "one head of cattle", only there is a 'count-word' for every kind of thing. Mandarin subsumes pencils, spaghetti & poles into the category of words ("gender") that includes 'long, thin objects", books & sheets of paper into 'flat objects' & human beings & higher animals are counted as 'heads'.
It is easy to examine how a thing's grammatical category can vary according to both social & physical reasons when examining these unfamiliar gender systems. For example, Chinese manuscripts written in ancient Japan count divinities using the count-word for 'long, thin objects' presumably because the ancient Japanese gender system classified them that way: gods were represented by carved statues, trees or poles, and these belong to the gender "long, thin objects".
In contrast, both Classical & Mandarin Chinese categorises supernatural beings & those whose social status are elevated as "seats". This is a closer example to the issue I want to highlight today, namely that the gender of a thing or person is subjective. Whether we speak of linguistic or social categories, human cognition organises the universe by dividing it up into categories; these categories are not absolute, but based on biological & social perceptions. An outside observer cannot predict to which (linguistic) gender a person belongs in Mandarin: the rules for who gets counted with "seats" and who doesn't depend on knowing the rules of the culture & the situation.
This begs the obvious: this is true not only of language but human societies as well. As Westerners have been learning over the last half-century, the biological sex of a person does not absolutely box that person into one social role. As Westerners, we do expect that one's natural sex is the absolute source of one's social role, but this is not necessarily accurate.
The reason I am going on & on about this boring topic is that when languages divide the world into male & female categories (genders), some persons whose sex is female may end up in male categories in some categories. For example, when a language has distinct terms for males & females performing the same role, the female term may be derogatory in meaning (and often sexualised). Consider the difference between the referents of a master & a mistress: a master is someone in charge, whereas a mistress is the subordinate woman to a man, a woman sexually linked to a man who is married to another.
Women often reject terminology that demeans them when they are in positions of equality. Sometimes this means coining new terms & at other times, it means assuming the male gender: simply taking the term used for men & using it refer to men as well. Women in Hollywood are actors, not actresses, to those in the trade: the term actress is considered not equal in meaning. On the other hand, we call female heads of state 'Madam President' or 'Madam Prime Minister': this is adding a female referent before a male term. After all, Mrs. President is the wife of the President even though 'Mr. President' is the standard term for the leader of the US.
So here is the interesting article that sparked this long regurgitation: Language in India. Its author notes,
Many of the terms referring to the females are derived from the corresponding terms for the males, & this seems to be taken as the norm, not only for linguistic derivation but also for meaning derivation. However, for some terms there are no corresponding terms that would indicate the females. Consider the following examples: aRinan 'scholar', ca:nRo:n 'scholar/reputable men of good conduct, etc.', vaittiyan 'doctor', a:ca:n 'teacher', amaiccan 'minister'[.] There are no female counterparts for these other terms.Epicene is the proper term for a word that has male & female referents. As is clear from my examples, this situation exists in English as well despite the fact that we don't have a strong grammatical gender system like French.Though certain professional terms have male honorific forms, these do not have the corresponding female honorific forms. For example, naTikan means '(male) actor,' naTikar (male honorific) 'actor,' & naTikai means 'actress.' Some other words that behave in this very manner are: talaivan '(male) leader,' talaivar 'male leader (honorific)' & talaivi 'female teacher'. There is no corresponding term for the female honorific leader. Since the honorific form is used to indicate the plural number, there is a provision to mix the female & male persons & use a plural number for the multitude. One may be tempted to say the forms listed as masculine honorific forms are common gender forms. Yet, in actual use, these often assume male reference.
Does it help or hurt feminism to use epicene terminology? I tend to refer to, i.e., goddesses & actresses simply as gods & actors, specifying 'female X' when it is important to do so. However, I wonder how often this accurately represents women in the world - do I simply reinforce male-only images of the world? Consider what you imagine when someone says 'doctor' or 'scientist': doesn't it conjure up a male image?
What about God? Jews, Christians & Muslims share a common vision of God; despite the fact that the divine has no sex, you won't find people saying, "We believe in the same goddess" in the same context, partially because god, though clearly bringing up a male image, is the traditional term, whereas 'goddess' has a specifically female reference. A god can be either sex, but a goddess is a chick.
Not only that, but, as usual, 'goddess' has a negative connotation, one often associated with sexuality. In Arabic, for example, Muhammad destroyed the false idols of three divinities at Mecca before re-sanctifying it in the name of God (al-ilaah): one of them was the Goddess (al-ilat or al-ilaahat). Arabic-speaking Muslims, Jews & Christians all call God ellaah, the modern Standard Arabic form of the same word, whereas the word ellah or ellaahah would never be used: it means a female pagan divinity.
