Language is a mirror of its society and of many social developments. In Germany, for example, various concepts and draft laws have emerged – as a result of feminist language criticism – such as §§ 611a and b as well as 612 para. 3 of the German Civil Code (BGB) or the concepts of doing/undoing gender in order to institutionalize a gender-equitable language. Feminist linguistic criticism thus has significance not only for politics, educational science or sociology and institutions of social emancipation, but also for language, arts, and literature. Language research in this field has lead to recommendations for institutional embedding of gender-equitable and subsequently to the language change.
This article aims to reconstruct this process of feminist language criticism and its contribution to language change, to present (by means of examples) the subject matter, areas, main features, impact, and challenges of feminist language criticism and to show its contribution to language change or reform. It proceeds in four steps. At first, it offers a historical review; the second step is about language change. This is followed by a discussion of language oriented by feminist postulations; in which I confine myself to administrative and legal language, professional titles, and some forms of address. In the fourth section, proposals and ways towards gender-equalize language are discussed, such as splitting and neutralization. Finally, the essay takes up some points that show where feminization or neutralization of language is still not complete today. The paper closes with a short conclusion.