Ask your doctor or pharmacist!

Gender equality is an integral part of the woken canon. The term implies a universal claim – in fact, however, injustices against men are rarely discussed. This starts with language, which activists say is changing the way we think.

Years ago, the great linguist Max Goldt criticized the postmortem sex reassignment of men: "'The man' becomes 'the corpse'." or pharmacist" - rather to the living, i.e. to those who choose.

Remarkably, the minister has not yet been confronted with an obvious argument. According to activists, language changes thinking. According to experts, the studies that prove this do not correspond to those scientific standards that should be self-evident for scientists like Lauterbach.

Historical field tests don't look much more convincing either. How many GDR citizens showed a change in thinking when the Wall was named an "anti-fascist protective wall"? Especially since everyone knew that there were fewer fascists west of the Wall who wanted to invade the GDR - and the self-firing devices and border guards did not shoot in the west, but in the direction of their own population.

Still, it doesn't hurt to assume for a moment that language does change thinking; that this thesis has a universal validity beyond all academic-progressive milieus.

The argument for gender-neutral wording is that when people hear words like doctors and pharmacists, they automatically think of men and women are therefore made invisible.

However, this leads to poorer career opportunities for women in these fields. Let us further assume that this is also a fact. Then it would have to mean - if things are right - that one gender has to accept professional disadvantages due to non-gender-neutral naming. For example, women are still significantly underrepresented in professorships in technical subjects, in board positions in DAX companies or among concrete workers.

Now this is interesting. Since 1975, the then balanced gender ratio of medical students has shifted dramatically: Today, around two-thirds are female, as are around 90 percent of gynecologists and 75 percent of dermatologists and paediatricians.

Since the 1980s, the proportion of female licensed employees in German pharmacies has been over 80 percent. Half of the pharmacies are owned by women. And this change took place despite the well-established phrase “ask your doctor or pharmacist”. But if language changes thinking and thus gender equality, a minister interested in justice would have to push for the retention of the wording: Because the proportion of men in these professions is falling rapidly, well below any parity measure.

Instead, Lauterbach could deal with the elimination of another gender injustice: the abolition of gender-neutral package inserts that is both necessary and sensible. Because they usually only know the dosage for children, adolescents and adults. If you ask your doctor or pharmacist, however, you will find out that 800 milligrams of an active ingredient have a different effect on a 60-year-old man weighing 100 kilograms than on a young mother weighing 50 kilograms.

So there is a lot to be done in terms of gender equality on package inserts - even beyond the dogma that language changes thinking.

The author is a historian with a research focus on National Socialism.