On Wednesday, Japan Airlines named a former flight attendant, Mitsuko Tottori, as its president. This promotion was broadcast on TV and caught people’s attention because she is the first woman president in JAL’s history and the first president who are used to work as a cabin attendant. Japan still has problems with gender inequity and is behind most of the developed countries in terms of gender equality. However, JAL’s new appointment enabled women in Japan to have positive expectation for the future, said Mitsuko Tottori, the new president of JAL.

While watching TV news, I often find words, such as “女性議員” and “女性社長” which intentionally emphasize that the person is woman. I think that this way of describing is not appropriate because young children hearing these words will learn old-fashioned ideas about gender and have an undesirable stereotype. Words have the power to make an impression of a thing that is described. Since, children passively receive words from their parents or any other adults, adults have to care about which words to use depending on situations. I do not say that every single word should be changed to a gender-neutral word right now. But I hope people use more neutral words so that nobody will be offended.

picture: https://jp.reuters.com/economy/industry/5BYK6YTKENODXC4AYZCYNLN5MQ-2024-01-17/