I have recently been hearing professional broadcasters on radio and television using phrases like, “woman
lawyer” and “woman athlete.” It must stop. The word “woman” is a noun and it
may not be used to modify another noun. The common adjective you would use here
is of course “female.”
De-emphasizing gender in society is a coming and welcome
trend, and referencing gender in any kind of qualifying context is
very last year. You see it in retail, you see it in product design and in a lot of marketing, and I enthusiastically recommend adapting to rather than fighting this trend.
My interdictions against the creep of poor usage are a fool's errand, but I believe them to be worth a try. Moderate
preservationists like me get twenty fingers or toes in the dike at a time,
and still plenty slips through, much of which I consider fine. But some of these leaks I
don’t much care for at all. And this is one. Woman lawyer. It's not okay.
So really, we’ve covered two items here, and in the interest
of full disclosure, its source was first the grammar part, and then my fiancé clued
me in on the sexist component of the usage in general. Slicing through
flesh and bone and directly into my nervous system, the adjectival use of
“woman” ran me up a wall with a teeth-chattering, mind-numbing electric shock.
And later on, the sexist nature of gratuitously applying an irrelevant
qualifier was impressed upon me by my fiancé.
For instance, stop saying "female attorney." She's your attorney.
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