Dr/Mr/Mrs/Mdm/Ms, circle according to your assumptions
This article on the front page of Today set off a minor rantfest by a (male) co-worker: “What? How dare they just call him a ‘Mr’? Don’t they know he’s an eminent professor and a ‘Sir’? And he just deserves a ‘Mr’?”
Gee, well, now you know how a lot of women PhD holders feel! Nice to see that the shoe is on the other foot, for a change.
Interestingly though, although the Today article is attributed to Bloomberg, the original Bloomberg article doesn’t make any references to titles at all. Yep, someone at the editing office probably plugged those in without thinking.
Now for two questions:
1) Would there be a similar rantfest if the people referred to in the article had been female?
2) If the paper published a correction tomorrow, would they have done the same if the people referred to had been female?
Leaving out professional titles when you’re talking about people in their professional capacity is not about bruised and sensitive egos.
It’s about simple respect and equity.
If you were to write a document where you refer to a male PhD holder as “Dr”, it’s only fair to extend the same courtesy to a female PhD holder. Otherwise, the message you’re sending is that a degree earned by a female is worth less than that of a male.
And here, the perpetrators are quite often women themselves, sadly enough.
September 28, 2007 at 1:14 pm
Funny, my alma mater had a tradition of addressing professors as Mr/Mrs/Ms/Miss. That tradition had been somewhat eroded by the time I went there, but it is notable that the tradition was regarded as a kind of reverse snobbery: there was no need to use the appellation ‘Dr’ because it was assumed that everyone there had a doctorate.
September 28, 2007 at 1:30 pm
At another place I’ve worked, we don’t even bother with those - everyone gets addressed by their first name.
The point I’m making is that if you - a writer, a reporter, a secretary, whatever - choose to use it, do your homework and find out who it applies to. Do not blindly address every male as a Dr and then go on to address every female as a Ms/Mrs - if you do, you are automatically assuming that the males are worthy of more respect than the females.
It happens very frequently here in Singapore. Take a look at minutes for a committee composed of scientists, for example. More often than not, you’ll find the “Dr” being added to every male name, and a Ms/Mrs added to every female name.