Sexist drafting and translation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU

Abstract

The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU (adopted in 2000 and legally binding since 2009) was the object of criticism during its process of drafting, among other issues, on gender grounds for the use of sexist language, the lack of gender mainstreaming, and not having a clearer stance on the support of equality between women and men. This article lists the main amendments that were submitted in this respect. The final version of the Charter was modified to eliminate sexist language in the original English text but not in other language versions, as we will see in the analysis. Based on the European Institute for Gender Equality’s definition of non-sexist use of language as the avoidance of ambiguous masculine gender, we will highlight the appearance of so-called generic masculine in the Charter’s versions in English, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese. Finally, a proposal of non-sexist Spanish translation is included with the hope to demonstrate the functional adequacy, simplicity and need to implement non-sexist translation and drafting of an EU text.