Romanian Terms for Less Common Feminine Professions

Abstract

For millennia, the woman has been marginalized by society, her place being near children and husband and less within the male-dominated world, the one of business, politics, and economy. The mentalities of the community, the traditions and the prejudices have led to laws restricting the right of women to work, in general, or to practice certain professions. Regarding the professions exercised by women throughout history, there is in the Romanian language a rich terminological material, which can prove, on one hand, a socio-economic reality - persistent discrimination against working women, and on the other hand, the lexical processes underlying the structure of the class of feminine names of professions. The knowledge of the contemporary Romanian society's spirituality, of the nation's aspirations, is emphasized by the states in which the “working woman” appears. Moreover, sociologists emphasize the fact that, in time, although the women's emancipation led to the broadening of the horizon as far as choosing a profession goes, there continues to exist a clear discrimination against women in the practice of some professions and, especially, the possibility of occupying leadership positions. Our paper, made based on an inventory of terms excerpted from various documents of the sixteenth century - until the nineteenth century, but also from texts of the current Romanian language, highlights the fact that feminine names of professions represent a heterogeneous lexical group, both in terms of form and terms of provenance.