To celebrate the launch of the Women Professors Network at Unifr and the International Women's Day, we invite you to the following conference, which is open to everyone.

When referring to a person’s personal, social, or professional role – such as a scientist, a traveler, or a professor – knowing the person’s gender is not always crucial for understanding the discourse. In fact, it rarely is. However, research suggests that when we read or listen to sentences where gender is not specified, such as “The professors were really interested” or “Les professeurs étaient vraiment intéressés,” we still form a mental representation of these people that includes gender. In my presentation, I will present data from different languages (e.g., French and German) to demonstrate that we tend to attribute gender in ways that unnecessarily narrow our perceptions of the world. I will argue that language inevitably compels us to focus on certain properties of the world that are not always relevant. I will further explore specific properties of grammatical languages, such as using the masculine form as the default, and discuss whether these properties bias the way we attribute gender. Additionally, I will briefly address some practical aspects of the issues at stake, often referred to as “inclusive language.