Gender neutral drafting: Gender equality or an unnecessary burden? by Constanza Toro IALS Student Law Review | Volume 5, Issue 1, Spring 2018, pp. 34-40 | Page 34 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License “Language does not merely reflect the way we think: it also shapes our thinking. If words and expressions that imply that women are inferior to men are constantly used, that assumption of inferiority tends to become part of our mindset. Hence the need to adjust our language when our ideas evolve. Language is a powerful tool”. 1 “History Herstory My story Introducing gender neutral titles at HSBC”. 2 Abstract Gender neutral policies are almost unanimously defended nowadays. However, legal drafting is not always up to date regarding this challenge. This article examines the different type of reasons to defend a gender neutral drafting, highlighting that there are both justice reasons (inclusiveness) and methodological ones (clarity, precision and unambiguity) to embrace such policy. However, the author warns that gender neutral drafting is only a necessary but an insufficient tool to achieve the broader goal of gender equality. The article approaches the different drafting techniques available to achieve gender neutral drafting and, in this context, analyse the recent Chilean instruction on this matter. I. Introduction Since the second wave of feminism, there has been an increasing focus on the relationship between gender and language, acknowledging that language itself can be an instrument of oppression, by silencing women. 3 This can also be applied to the specific context of legal language, if we consider that “legal discourse systematically excludes, devalues, trivializes and ignore women”. 4 Hence, the importance of analysing the language in which the law is expressed, and more specifically the type of language in which we should draft legislation. The need of drawing attention to gender neutral drafting has been progressively supported during the last decades. However, there are still some people that argue against it, considering it unnecessarily complicated or artificial. In this context, the hypothesis guiding this article is that gender neutral drafting must be embraced, both for justice (inclusiveness) and methodological reasons (clarity, precision and unambiguity); nonetheless, it is not enough on its own to achieve gender equality across the law. 1 UNESCO Guidelines on Gender-Neutral Language [1999] 4 2 Sign displayed by HSBC truck at Pride Parade London, 8 th July 2017. 3 Jennifer Hornsby, ‘Feminism in Philosophy of Language: Communicative Speech Acts’, In: Fricker M and Hornsby J (Eds), The Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy [2000] 87. 4 Karen Busby, ‘The maleness of legal language’ (1989) 18 Manitoba Law Journal 210.