A beautiful project of an artist Iwona Demko has been creating a collection of collages with feminatives – feminine version of nouns describing different people. This has been printed in a form of book by Jan Matejko Adacemy of ARTS and Dom Utopii – międzynarodowe centrum empatii. This is my participation piece. I am so proud to become a part of this extremely important history of Polish Art and Feminism.
In polish language words have types: masculine, feminine and neuter. When it comes to objects, there is no problem there. But if you want to describe a female occupation, such as a doctor, she becomes “he doctor” – specially that you often miss first names and only present professions by last names that may not anything about gender. This means female achievers are considered being males by default!
So you can see the problem. Our language and history of language allows us to make a change and encourage people to use feminine descriptions if a certain profession is performed by a woman. Let’s do this, so that girls know, that there are female scientists, female doctors or/and female politicians.