Gender-neutral language or negative assessment?

The rector of the PPH Burgenland referred to a guideline from the Centre for Gender and Diversity Competence, according to whose recommendations a (positive) grade would not be possible if gender was omitted. The student, on the other hand, argued that the use of the generic masculine is not in itself gender-discriminatory and turned to the Ombudsman Board, under the remit of Ombudsperson Christoph Luisser.

The Ombudsman Board submitted a request for a statement to the Minister of Science, in which it wanted to know, among other things, on what legal basis the teacher made a negative judgement of the work in "Fachdidaktische Grundlagen 2". In addition, she was also generally interested in what requirements there were for "gender-sensitive language" for each individual subject still to be completed by the student and "whether a possible obligation only refers to linguistically correct 'gendering' or whether spellings are also required [...] which, according to the current Duden 'are not covered by the official rules' (e.g. *, interior capital I in German words etc.).

In its statement, the Ministry replied that it generally supports "gender-equitable language" in the sense of equality and that the PPHs had been instructed to use gender-equitable language in their examination regulations, referring to § 5 of the BMBWF Women's Promotion Plan. For example, the pair spelling, gender-neutral formulations or the slash variant are permitted.

The Austrian Ombudsman Board criticised the opinion of the PPH Burgenland, which took the view that it would be "right or even necessary to give a negative assessment in every written examination from the 5^th semester at the latest if 'gender-neutral language' is not used". Failure to use gender would therefore be an "all-encompassing knock-out criterion". Such a radical measure is not covered by the legal bases cited in the position paper. On the contrary, this approach clearly restricts the right of every citizen to use the German official language in all linguistically correct forms (e.g. including the generic masculine) in dealings with authorities in accordance with Art. 8 (1) of the Federal Constitution Act. "The Austrian Ombudsman Board also did not agree with the view that linguistic equality must be observed in every single sentence. This would mean a completely outdated pedagogy of 'blowing the whistle', which also wanted to achieve a change of attitude through constant, insistent repetition," explains Ombudsperson Luisser.

The Ministry of Science finally conceded that the statements of the "Centre for Gender and Diversity Competence", which had called for a consistent negative assessment of non-gender students' work from the 5^th semester onwards, would no longer be supported. PPH Burgenland has removed a reference to this from its website. "In future, non-compliance with the relevant formulation guidelines will only be assessed proportionately, in the form of a deduction of points," reports Ombudsperson Christoph Luisser. According to the Ombudsperson, it is also positive that the PPH should be informed that the recommendations of the German Spelling Council must be taken into account.