Legal Controversy
Governments, clubs, and other groups have interpreted sentences like "every member must take off his shoes before entering the chapel" to mean that therefore female members may not enter the chapel. The Persons Case, the legal battle over whether Canadian women counted as legal persons eligible to sit in the Senate, partially turned on such a point.
By contrast, the Constitution of Ireland describes the President of Ireland throughout as "he", yet two of the most recent presidents were women; in 1997, four of the five candidates in the election were women. Efforts in a court case to argue that "he" excluded women were dismissed by the Irish Supreme Court, which ruled the term "gender-neutral". (The Constitution's primary version is in Irish, where the male pronoun sé is considered gender-neutral.)
Read more about this topic: Gender-neutral Pronoun, English, Modern English
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