汉字中的性别歧视

读了一篇《经济学人》文章，讲到中文，特别是汉字中显现出的gender bias（性别偏见）。

作者提到，在很多欧洲的语言中，比如：法语、西班牙语，都含有性别的偏见，而中文（普通话）Yet Mandarin—spoken by 70% of Chinese people—has gender bias, too. 例如：人们把female bosses成为“女老板”，而说male bosses时，就不会专门去加上“男性”这两个字。

中文的一些汉字也包含性别的负面刻板印象（some of its written characters ascribe negative stereotypes to women）。

汉字是由两部分组成的（Chinese characters are made up of smaller components, called radicals（部首）, that come in two forms. Phonetic radicals give clues about a character’s pronunciation; semantic ones give clues about its meaning.） For example, the radical for “speech” (讠) is semantic and is found on the left side of characters associated with speech: “language” (语), “words” (话), “to request” (请), “to chat” (谈), “to thank” (谢) and so on.

Chinese dictionaries are often sorted by radical, so these characters are listed together. Similarly, the Chinese radical for “woman” (女) is found in the characters for “mother” (妈), “sister” (姐), and “aunt” (姑).

但是“女字旁”会在一些负面意思的字中出现：But the “woman” radical is also found in the characters and words for “jealousy” (妒), “suspicion” (嫌), “slave” (奴隶), “devil” (妖) and “rape” (强奸). 虽然“女字旁”也会出现在一些积极语义的汉字（如：好，安）中，但是仍存有偏见。“好”字左边是女字旁，右边是“子”，显示出“母以子贵”的传统偏见。而“安”表现出女人需要在屋顶之下才能获得安全。相比较而言，“男”字则是由“田”（field）和“力”（power）组成的 。这都是中国文化中推崇的元素。

中文中也总是把“男”置于“女”之前。比如：parents（父母，father and mother，父在前）。甚至“男女平等”（gender equality）都是先说男，后说女。（Most ironically, as one linguist has noted, the phrase for “gender equality” 男女平等 puts the male character before the female one.）

你对这个说法怎么看？你认为这算是一种文化中的gender bias吗？