 So, the first two presentations were to do with giving a general introduction to these issues. We are now going to go into specifics how exactly we can address these sensitivity issues in academic communication. We are going to look at best practices and also worst practices. So, we are going to look at why, what and how. We have discussed a little bit about gender and diversity issues. So, we will start with gender then we will go to other diversity issues, specifically on ethnicity, age and disability, we will start with gender. The kind of exercises that I mentioned earlier on the assignments, those will help us to sensitize ourselves about these issues. So, it does not matter whether we are men or women, many of us are not aware of the importance of the gender in communication, how it can affect other people, how it can affect men, women, boys, girls in the classroom. So, first thing is to prepare ourselves and say that yes, this is an example and I have to address it is important. We try to find out what is the difference between these three. So, this is a book for example about Guide to Gender Aware Post Disaster Needs Assessment. So, based on what I told you earlier, can you write down what is the difference between these three? What you think are the difference between these three? I do not want you to write very long essays. You have said, can you tell us what is? Gender means problem related to gender. Gender neutral means gender equality. Gender awareness means creating awareness among people about gender disparity. What I want to mention, while this is not wrong, this is correct, we are talking about gender sensitive, gender neutral and gender aware with reference to communication styles. So, how do we understand these three? So, gender sensitive is the treatment of women in workplaces and gender neutral is considering the equality of women in workplaces and gender awareness related to that, the existence of women and their rights to be considered in the society. So, we can see already that there is so much diversity about how to look at these issues. Can you go back? Sir, in my view gender awareness must come first. Only when we are aware, we will be gender sensitive and gender neutral, gender fairness are equal in my view. Can you pass it on here and then we will go there. From what I have understood up to the presentation, gender sensitive is when none of the genders are underrepresented and gender neutral is, it means the use of pair pronouns is a or a common pronoun there and gender aware is when the correct gender is, you know the correct gender and you use that instead of just vaguely using deers or like in an application, could be a female also. Thank you very much. Gender sensitive means using the words which are based on gender or religion. Gender neutral which is a way of communicating in unbiased way. Gender aware is knowing the consequences of using biased communication. Sir, I want to, I don't want to give any explanation on that. Okay. But I want to have a clarification. Okay. Now you said about in communication we need be gender sensitive, gender neutral and gender awareness. But I want to know how to deal with the transgender. Yeah. Thank you very much. Yeah. So that's the third gender and transgender is also becoming an important issue now. So thus far, all the problems relating to making our language more sensitive has dealt with dealing with men and women. But this is also an important issue. So as of now, we have very few protocols with dealing with third gender or transgender. Okay. So some solutions will come to that. So as I was saying, all of you are correct in different ways. But I want to talk about these in a very specific way. That is, while communicating scientific knowledge, while communicating our research, while communicating what we have to teach, sensitive or fair refers to the fact that we are aware that there are men, women, transgender, third gender and so on and making sure we don't use an exclusive term like mankind or men or he to refer to all of them. Gender neutral is when it is not important to focus on the differences. So there are some cases where we want to ensure that we refer to all of them. There are some cases where it is not important to us, whether we are subjects that we are talking about our men or women. You are doing a study of fatigue and tiredness in the workplace, maybe in the airplane among men and male and female workers. So you are interested in fatigue and tiredness. You are not interested in separating out the findings by men and women. So when you are not interested in those differences, then you look at, you use general neutral terms. I'll give you examples. When we are talking about third gender, transgender and so on, again in such cases also we either do not want to mention their gender at all or we want to refer to them in terms of their own preferred gender. If you don't know, it's preferable to use gender neutral terms, avoid reference to any gender. Gender aware is, that's the reason I gave this example here. So there are some cases where we know that there are differences between men and women which can be physiological, which can be psychological, which can be social and we have to incorporate that into our research. So I want to set up post disaster relief and recovery mechanisms. And if I know that women's needs are different from men, then I need to have different strategies and policies. So in that case, I am gender aware. So this is an example actually from an IDRC, IDRC is International Development Research Center. It's one of the biggest funding agencies for research in the world. And they will insist that your language, your research proposal address these issues otherwise they will not even look at your proposal. So if for example you say, my technology is going to benefit 300,000 people. They will ask you how many of these are men, how many of women, how many are children. Because if you're not sure, it indicates you have not done your work properly. You may end up with developing a solution which benefits only men and not women. So there is a practical impact of this. Or sometimes we are not interested in gender aware or gender sensitive. So some people will make this first statement. Marie Curie is a great woman scientist. Nobody ever says Albert Einstein was a great man scientist, isn't it? So this is an example where you are needlessly drawing attention to the gender. If you are doing research among great women scientists, then you can mention the gender. Marie Curie was a great scientist. So if gender is not important, don't bring it in. So this is an example of stereotyping that we know most scientists are men. It just happens that Marie Curie is an exception, so we want to draw attention to our gender. That's how it appears. So it's an effect of stereotyping in our own minds. So the stereotyping is something we should avoid in our communication. So here what it indicates is that most scientists are men, very few scientists are women. Therefore it is necessary for me to point out. But most women do many things, not only scientists do many things. And most women are not only doing cooking, they are doing a great many things also. So these kinds of feminized nouns, like when we talk about an actor, we are talking about the profession. So unless you want to bring attention to the gender, you don't have to say actress. Just you can just say actor to refer to both men and women or chair women, sports women, business women and so on. No need to point to their gender unless it's necessary. So when you needlessly bring in the gender, that's an example of stereotyping. Or these are also examples of stereotyping. Or further examples here. So these could be sentences when we for example organize conferences and are sending out. So research scientists often transport will be provided for delegates and there are 30 women, I say 40 women. Who are also delegates or participants who may have come with their spouses. So you can, there are words available. So one of the things we want to say is that these kinds of terminologies have come into usage not because of lack of alternatives. There are alternatives but we don't use them because for a long time women were very less present in these kinds of situations. Writing these communication messages written over and so on. Or this looks like a very interesting scientific study. Research scientists often neglect their wives and children. So somebody wrote an article called, now even your mom can program. So there was a lot of outcry against this because it is assumed here that moms are generally stupid. And with Arduino you can do it, otherwise they cannot do it. Even though some of the biggest CEOs of large software companies in the world including Yahoo are women. HPE and Compaq and all of them are women. So there was an outcry against this and subsequently this author gave an apology because there is, it indicates a kind of prejudice towards mothers. That's what we are saying about it. Normally from the name we cannot differentiate whether it is a lady or a man or a woman. And when we are writing a letter, like for example in India also, like Dr. Kamal is the name in both the things. Or in foreign countries we never understood whether it is a lady or a man. So how we can address it because we need that for the addressing. So that's why we have given you these options. If you know then you can, as one of you mentioned here, if you know you can actually say dear sir or madam. If you don't know you can say dear sir or madam. That's the difference between gender neutral and gender sensitive and gender aware. So depending on your knowledge you can use one of these options. Or you can just say sir slash madam if you don't know. You can use different kind of options. So that goes back to what you were just asking. One has to become aware when to use them, when not to use them, when to avoid the use of gender. So you can use he or him if you know the gender. If you don't know to assume that that person is always a male that is being unfair. That is being stereotypical. So when you use only he or only she also. Both men and women that is referred to as sexist pronoun or sexist noun. When we use words like mankind, man, men and so on. These are examples of sexist use of language or stereotyping. These are some of the solutions that we can use. We can use pronounced pairs. He or she, she, he and so on. So you can also use plural pronouns. They for example. Instructions to a group of participants like you. So at this job every participant has to submit his evaluation form. Which is wrong because there are both men and women. I can say every participant has to submit his or her evaluation form. I can always say all participants have to submit their evaluation form. So avoid mentioning gender altogether. That is an example of neutrality. Whose gender you know. Then you can specify. I am doing this among female pilots, among male subjects and so on. Or sometimes you can just replace first person like I or an article. So at the end of this module each participant should submit a response sheet. Saying should submit his response sheet or her response sheet. Or at the end when I am submitting a proposal to a funding agency. At the, I can say the researcher has submitted his CV along with this proposal. Or I can avoid gender and say I have appended my CV along with this proposal. There are various ways in which you can avoid these things altogether these problems. Various kinds of alternatives that are available. There is a UNESCO manual that has been created which we will share with you. Which gives hundreds of many studies also do now. So these on the left side you have this common usages. Which are no longer considered to be acceptable. On the right side which you can use in your communication workplace communication. Formal, informal communication, written oral and so on. I will give you examples, published articles. Where give examples of sensitive and insensitive language. So here you have a sentence from an article that I have taken. Lead acid battery models developed by chemistry experts are not expressed in terms of electrical networks. That would help an electrical engineer to explain, explore his know-how. So this article assumes that all electrical engineers are men. So that is not acceptable. You can use any of those solutions that I gave you earlier. Instead of referring to electrical engineer as his. You should assume that can be male, female, third gender, transgender. This is another example. Mankind is now able to design materials. So men in this in IIT Bombay working on. So it need only men here. So it just. And we do have words like human, humanity, humankind and so on. This one I was telling you earlier about. Use of which can have serious consequences for the use of our knowledge. Third example here. It's about effects of ketan serine and haloperidol on pre-pulse inhibition of the acoustic startle, eye blink response and in man. Suppose I want to use this research. And I want to find out the response and effect on both men and women. Now I'm a busy person. Of course a doctor wants to use this. Doctors are very busy. They want to find out only from the title whether this applies only to men or to men and women. So you are yourself losing out on more people reading your study if you do not use sensitive language here. So if this refers to both men and women, then you mention it because we know the physiology of men and women is not exactly the same. To be different. So mention. I'll say response in human beings. Humans. Again another example here where exclusive use of masculine nouns is used to refer to both men. To all human beings. Again these are examples of how not to use the language. These are from older articles as you can see. These days most of these journals have revised their guidelines and they will not accept these titles anymore. So man machine interface, man's survival, yeast and man. You can see. These are all from famous journals. On the other hand these are from more recent journals. Some of them have changed their guidelines earlier. Some of them more recently. So you can see in this article it says education technology and the professional in Brazil. He's a her formation. So the educational professional like all of us can be both men and women. Can be a third gender. Or you can just say educational technology and professionals in Brazil. Their formation. If you want to include third gender and other people also. So instead of manpower you can use human resources. Manpower is a term that's to be avoided. This is an article from the American Journal of Distance Education. One sentence is like this. They have used a pronoun pair. Hishi. This is from social psychology quarterly. Reaction to a child's mistakes are affected by his her looks. That's how we are supposed to say. Or you can see this one. So this author is very careful in stating that the DNA damage is studied both among men and women. So somebody who is interested in using this research only in women or only in men can read this. I know exactly what this article is about. It's not vague, it's not ambiguous, it's crystal clear. You should try to replace the pronoun's length is her. Yes. Once, yes you can do that also. Yes sir. You can do that, yes. One should know the, one should know what is one's responsibility. Rather than saying his or her. Correct. You can do that. Thank you sir. So there are many different solutions. So that is the beauty of this. That there are actually so many different ways of addressing this problem and yet we continue to make the same mistakes. So there are so many different ways in which you can address these kinds of problems. Make the language in fact clearer. So you can see it's not simply about avoiding bias. It's also what make the language clear. So saying, saying from media presentations would actually hit the spur also. So usually some people say there's nothing wrong because this is what we've been doing for centuries. What is wrong with using mankind and so on. This is the response to that. Okay. So the idea is that in communication we want to feel everybody feel included. Not to exclude anybody. That's why we are doing this. That increases the effectiveness of our communication. So these are a large number of examples of how to avoid gendered nouns and then bring in gender neutral nouns to substitute. And you can probably make these lists by yourself and give them to your, you can identify. I'll just come to you. You can probably identify in your specific subjects that you're teaching what kind of words are commonly used and what kind of substitutes can you find for them. And then pass it on to your students to use in their assignments, projects, papers and so on. Yes. In the earlier example, there was one sentence from the journal, you know. And I believe if we can still stick to the older method by writing in passive voices. In that case also we can avoid using he or she. Yes. If I had time, I would have talked about that. You know, in general, we are supposed to avoid use of passive voice because use of passive voice is more convoluted. It doesn't make the language clearer. But in the larger presentation which I give here and in other places, we say that in the interests of gender fairness, you can use passive voice. You can use passive voice in attached. Yeah. So you avoid mentioning any person. So instead of saying he, she's, I have attached. You can just say later has been attached. Most of the word processing software, you automatically recognizes passive voice and underlines it in red and says, please consider converting it into active voice. So in general, we are supposed to use passive voice very sparingly. But in the interest of being gender fair, you can use sometimes. Sir, see what you are giving now is substituting the word. Yes. It is a very temporary solution, I think. Actual solution is we need to change the mentality of the society. Correct. What we talked about the stereotypes. Correct. That is something what we identify these words. Correct. But actually we know the mentality. Yes. That we need to change. Then I think these words will not make much difference. We, that's completely accepted. What we are saying is society takes a lot of time to change. Those problems we should not import into our communication. So what can we do is to avoid those stereotypes and biases from coming into our communication while at the same time struggling to remove those stereotypes from society. So what we are saying is as teachers we have a role. If we can change our communication, in the long run people will overcome those stereotypes. Because earlier generations did not do it, it is taking more time. Whereas if we can do it in our classrooms, those stereotypes will disappear much faster. Is it right to use active voices or passive voices in technical communication? Active. Active voice. Active is what we are supposed to use most of the time. Some people feel that it is better to use impersonal passive voice to focus on the action rather than the doer of action. What do you feel about this sir? So this depends on which discipline you are from. So recently I submitted an article, this was on disasters, where I was asked to use more passive voice. So it depends. So there are certain kinds of publishers who would like you to use more active, certain kinds of publishers, journals who would like you to use passive. So it is better to find out. So these days most associations, bodies, journals also give you guidelines. They have to find out. And there is also a preferred style that has evolved over a period of time in every subject. So and since history is dealing with the past most often they tend to use more of passive voice. So it depends. So one golden rule we want to say here is that there is no standard rule. It is always important to find out what is the preferred style even then that will become more clear in the next presentation. It is always important for us. So sensitivity means finding out what is acceptable and then using it, not assuming that what you say is correct. There is a very, some of sometimes in searching alternative terms especially for new terms, in searching for words which are gender neutral, gender fair and so on you can end up with very awkward terms. Uncrued aerial vehicle. The American society of mechanical engineers, it can be very awkward and generally we say technical communication must be accurate but it may be elegant as far as possible. So this is not exactly an elegant term but this one is. Instead of saying unmanned aerial vehicle you can say robotic aircraft or nowadays you call them drones. These are just more examples. Again I am not going to go into all of them in detail. Just to show that there are a lot of alternative terms that can be used to avoid these kind of sexist terms which are no longer considered to be acceptable which are considered to be stereotypes. So let us do some exercises. So we are saying gender neutral language is dashed and free of something inclusive and free of stereotypes and biases. Women are vastly dashed in STEM jobs and among that is one of the reasons why we are talking about this. If they were more better represented some of these communication problems may not have a much. So they are underrepresented. Terms that specify a particular sex can unnecessarily perpetuate certain stereotypes. It is the same term that we use there. Be aware of the gender specific words you use, their meanings and communication effects. What is the effect on communication rules? So these are just examples of how you can design online assessment. So there are two things that you have to consider when you design these quizzes. One, to sensitize the students or participants about the broader issues which are these. Or you can give quizzes on actual terms and words which are the correct ones. So combination of both would work well in training students. I am calling this home assignment which you can use later but let us see if we can do it here. How much do you know about how men and women communicate? So there are a lot of psychological studies which talk about differences in communication. So nonverbal messages carry more weight than verbal messages. So I would like to ask only the men in this audience to respond. Women, I will come to you. The men, how many of you think this is true? No, I don't want to go into depending now. That is a classic academic response to all the questions. It depends. Yes or no? True or false? True. How many of you think it is false? Only one. And women, how many of you think this is true? First sentence? Okay, almost all women. Nonverbal messages carry more weight than verbal messages. That is instead of speaking, I give a message through a gesture. It could be nodding my head. It could be shrugging my shoulders. It could be through eyes, expression, all of those kind of things. As well as walking and walking. In spite of that, most of the men here said it is true. So visual is more than verbal. Sorry, visual is more effective than verbal, we are saying. Sir, nonverbal is 55 percent. Number? 55 percent. Nonverbal is 55. Nonverbal is 55. On what basis do you say that? I have referred to the book. You have referred to the book, that's very good. 55 percent. 38 percent is your vocal. 55 percent is visual. And verbal is your 7 percent. Now, what just came out in this classroom is very interesting. And it probably shows that the men here are more sensitive. Because in general studies show that men notice verbal messages more than nonverbal ones. Whereas women notice nonverbal messages more than women. But here, except for one person, I am not saying you are insensitive. In general we find that men will say, you never told me this. We will tell women you never told me this. But there was a signal that was sent out, but they didn't receive it. So nonverbal messages carry more weightage than verbal messages. It can be true or false. It all depends on the situation at which we are talking. So in a classroom when you are giving a lecture and if you want a pen, I will use nonverbal message. So it is correct at that particular situation. In general, we agree. Scientific thing to say is that it depends. In general, a lot of studies show that women are more queued into receiving nonverbal messages. Men for some reason are more stupid and have to be specifically told things. Otherwise they will not listen to you. All women do much more than cooking in their daily lives. True? True. And yet, one of the stereotypes that we talked about earlier was about housewife versus homewife. Housewife ignores this particular fact that women do a lot of things. It specifies that women are married to a house. That is their role. Whereas a homemaker recognizes that women do so many things. Cooking, cleaning, taking care of children, taking care of elderly people, sick people, shopping and working. Men also may do all of these things. But we do not refer to men as, you know, not only house husbands. I am saying we do not refer to men purely in terms of their work status. That is what we are saying. So men may do that work. But the fact that most men go out of the house to work, that aspect is not captured when we talk about their status. Whereas in the case of women, when they are doing household work, we refer to them as housewife even though they are doing so many things. So again, it goes back to what I was saying earlier in scientific communication. We have to be accurate. So homemaker is a more accurate term to refer to what women do. Whereas a housewife is not only a stereotype, it is a term that does not mean anything actually. Because again, it seems to refer to the status of a woman purely in terms of her marital status, which is not always very important for us. Is this true when people, how many people think it is true? We can see that it is very few and it is mostly women. So it is very few and it is mostly women. So that is something that we need to become aware of. Because some of us feel that using terms like mankind and he are okay to use, that they do refer to both men and women and there is nothing wrong with it. So that is why a lot of experiments have been done and they show that, for example, you ask that there is this experiment of a book title. There was a book about urban man. It is referred to urban human beings as different from rural people. But when people, children were asked to write, draw a picture, they had pictures where only men were shown, though it was not about men. So a lot of such experiments have been done. Therefore, these kind of generic words which seem to refer to both men and women should not be used. One should write homemaker. But even a male, a man can be a homemaker. So in that case, sir. Yeah, anybody. So that is why we are using that term. It can be men or women. So we all are homemakers. Yes, of course you are. This is a kind of a experiment which you can design, which you can do yourself or you can design for other people. And here we are talking about the workplace community. So earlier we were talking mostly about communication with reference to academic research, about the work environment. I have given you certain kinds of terms which are acceptable and acceptable. It is possible for some of you to share with us what you deem to be discrimination, which may not be recognized as discrimination by others. Overt discrimination, we all know. No, I don't want to hire a woman. I don't want women to do this work. I won't assign this responsibility to women. Those kind of things we all are aware of. But certain kinds of practices in the work environment with reference to communication can, some of you share it, can be both men and women, share those experiences which you think are not adequately recognized by everybody in the workplace. My college, this group of seniors was sitting and they were trying to decide who will go to IIT Bombay to attend this course. So I got a call from my principal, sir. I went to his cabin and then my RC coordinator, he just told me that ma'am you will have to go to IIT Bombay to attend certain workshop. I said that's okay. Principal sir asked me like, seriously, are you going? I said yes. How will you manage? I said sir, I will manage everything and I will go there. The workshop is for one week. Read all the instructions and then register. I said yes sir, I will manage and I will register. So nobody in that room noted these things. But I as a woman, I felt that these many questions were asked to me only because I am a woman. Everybody else was okay with this. I am not saying that it is his fault because he totally understands that I have a lot many responsibilities. But he will not ask the same question to a male. Yes, of course. Because males are not expected to look after their children, they don't have to worry. Somebody else will do it. Maybe the concern. Because many of the times before assigning work, maybe they look into these factors. It's not because they cannot do. It is the concern whether they will be able to go by leaving their children. These are the maybe some issues. So that's the thing. So these concerns also reflect certain kinds of assumptions and stereotypes in our mind. So that's what we are talking about. And these concerns sometimes can actually look like compliments. So I have a PhD student in our department. She once mentioned this in the classroom. She was talking about how all her relatives always tell she has to grown up children. And all the relatives, oh, you're so great that you're able to manage the PhD. Your husband is so busy. And you have two children who are in 10th standard. I have to give this exam. Still you're able to do it. So she says nobody ever says such things to men. Because by saying this, by paying this compliment, they are identifying her gender and which she doesn't want. Just accept me as I am. Don't have to compliment me for being a woman and managing all of these things. That's what women do anyway all the time. So these things, that's exactly the thing that we are trying to say. That these are not necessarily prejudices. These are not necessarily biases. But these unconsciously can cause hurt or offense or can be taken in different ways by people. So sensitivity means being aware of these things and behaving accordingly. Speaking accordingly. That's what it means. It's not always about bias or insensitivity. It could be the other way around also. So we had some students, a teacher in Bombay University, was saying in the English department, it's the other way around. There are 15 girls to five boys. And boys actually express how they felt discriminated in such circumstances. So it's actually a question of the way in which our society is constituted and our workplaces are constituted. Not simply a question of who certain people being more predisposed to behave in certain ways. In my college, I have given the responsibility of selecting one of the faculty members for the forthcoming engineering physics. So we need to send it. So we have passed the communication to the department H&S. And as one of the senior members, we have identified. And we communicated the same to her. So in turn she communicated, like she had a talk with her husband. And her husband said, no, you can, like if you want to go, like if any one of the persons from your college is going to associate with you, then I can make you to go. So then she expressed this view. And somehow, like somebody, someone else has been selected for that. So I think this, my point may be relevant to this question. So what we want is for you to reflect on these kinds of things and see how the workplace environment and communication can be made better to avoid these kinds of situations. Can I just ask you how many, in how many of your institutions the number of male and female students is roughly the same? Okay. And then how many are the female students more than the number of boys? Few. Okay. And the majority is... Okay. Girls, okay. Yeah. But you can see that the majority is the other way around. Okay.