You may have noticed it is becoming a lot more common now for people to add their pronouns to their social media – especially after Instagram added this feature. Gender neutral pronouns seem to be on the rise, particularly amongst LGBTQ+ youths.

The use of “they/them” pronouns is not necessarily a new concept and has actually been around since the 17th century, however more recently there seems to be a rise in exposure or the use of gender neutral pronouns, especially amongst youths. A survey of roughly 40,000 young people within the LGBTQ+ community revealed that approximately 25% of them do not identify with their gender assigned from birth and prefer to go by more gender neutral pronouns such as “they/them”.

 To avoid misgendering, particularly after Instagram introduced the pronouns feature, adding pronouns to your bio has become increasingly popular. You might have even noticed on LinkedIn that people have started adding their pronouns to their profile and some have started signing off their emails with their pronouns, does this mean this is filtering into and becoming more normalised professional settings too?

 Just earlier we spoke to Hannah-Joy Gillar, Doctoral Researcher at the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies from the University of Sydney about the normalisation of gender neutral pronouns. 

To learn more about the use of pronouns and gender inclusivity, click here.