By Cyrille Godonou, Statistician
We propose here to study the use of writing in French universities, by providing a figure based on an indicator: the use or not of inclusive writing on the home page of French universities.
Firstly, inclusive writing[1] deviates from traditional linguistic rules in order to ensure equal and even parity in the representation of men and women in the use of the language, in particular by banning the rule according to which the masculine takes precedence over the feminine. To this end, its promoters resort to the use of the period, the midpoint, the parenthesis or the hyphen to write the feminine and the masculine in one word (lecteur.rice.s, traducteur·rice·s, étudiant(e)s or auditeur‑rice‑s), as indicated in the circular of the Minister of National Education of May 5, 2021 with regard to education: "it is appropriate to prohibit the use of so-called "inclusive" writing, which uses in particular the midpoint to simultaneously show the feminine and masculine forms of a word used in the masculine when it is used in a generic sense".
However, this usage is anything but consensual, which leads us to question the legitimacy of its introduction into a public higher education and research establishment: a question which is not at all anecdotal, provided that we take the measure of this usage, as we propose to do here.
This involves quantifying the use of inclusive writing on university websites by not counting the concomitant uses of the masculine and feminine ("les étudiants et les étudiantes") but only the use of spellings with a period, hyphen or parenthesis. We rely on an official list of higher education institutions, retaining only public universities. The list of public universities comes from the source of the Ministry of Higher Education and Research[2].
However, this approach has a significant limitation: it does not take into account the use of inclusive writing elsewhere, i.e. on other web pages, in student welcome booklets and especially its extension in academic journals. On the other hand, a single occurrence of inclusive writing including in the drop-down menus on the home page results in the public higher education institution being counted among the users of said writing.
In December 2022, out of 70 French universities in metropolitan France, overseas including Polynesia and New Caledonia, 19 display inclusive writing on the home page of their website, i.e. 27% of them.[3]. Thus, if the use of inclusive writing, measured in this way, remains in the minority, it is not really marginal.
Table 1 Count of French universities using inclusive writing on their homepage in December 2022
Source: Websites of French universities in December 2022, calculations by Cyrille GODONOU.
Scope: Universities corresponding to public establishments, excluding large establishments and grandes écoles.
Once the number of universities that use inclusive writing has been established, we can ask ourselves how many students are enrolled in these universities. Out of a total of 1,6 million students enrolled in a French university, nearly 407 are enrolled in an establishment where inclusive writing appears on the front page. In other words, 000% of French students are exposed to inclusive writing when they visit their university's website.
Table 2 Number and share of students by region enrolled in a university using or not using inclusive writing on its home page in December 2022
Source: Websites of French universities in December 2022 and Ministry of Higher Education and Research; the number of registrants relates to the 2020-2021 academic year, calculations by Cyrille GODONOU.
Scope: Universities corresponding to public establishments, excluding large establishments and grandes écoles.
The use of inclusive writing on the University homepage is not uniform across the territory. Some regions do not use it, such as Normandy and Bourgogne-Franche-Comté. Conversely, others concentrate a relatively high proportion of students attending a university that supports scriptural inclusiveness, namely Ile-de-France and Nouvelle Aquitaine, where 34% and 39% of students respectively are hosted by an inclusive university. Thus, among just under 368 students in the Ile-de-France region, 000 are educated in an inclusive university, the latter figure rising to more than 126 for Nouvelle Aquitaine.
The share of students in inclusive structures is rather high in regions with large numbers of students, but this is not systematic. As a counter-example, Réunion, which is not very large in number, has 100% of students in a linguistically inclusive university institution, precisely because the only university in the region uses inclusive language, which in turn leads all these students to be counted here. The spatial distribution shows that in addition to the Ile-de-France region, the Atlantic Arc regions, led by Brittany with 54% of students enrolled in universities using inclusive writing, Hauts-de-France (43% of students exposed to inclusive writing) and the overseas communities (53% of students exposed to inclusive writing) are those where students are most likely to read so-called inclusive spellings; to a lesser extent, Occitanie concentrates a relatively large proportion of students in universities promoting inclusive writing, with three out of ten students in a linguistically inclusive academic structure.
In doing so, the Ile-de-France alone accounts for 31% of students in linguistically inclusive university structures in France, while it only includes 23% of students enrolled in a university in France. A notable sign of this concentration is that the Ile-de-France and Hauts-de-France alone account for almost half of the students enrolled in a university that uses inclusive writing on its home page, compared to only a third of students, whether they are in a university that adopts this type of writing or not. Adding Brittany, New Aquitaine and Occitanie to them, it is clear that only five regions account for more than 80% of those enrolled who study under the aegis of a strong desire for inclusivity through writing, while less than 60% of students study there.
Figure 1 Map of regions of France with the share of students and student numbers exposed to inclusive writing on their university's homepage in December 2022
Source: Websites of French universities in December 2022; the number of registrants relates to the 2020-2021 academic year, calculations by Cyrille GODONOU.
Discretization method: quartile distribution for strictly positive data, as well as a class for zero values.
Scope: Universities corresponding to public establishments, excluding large establishments and grandes écoles.
Reading: In December 2022, in universities located in Ile-de-France, 126 students are enrolled in a university where inclusive writing is used on the home page, or 877% of all students in the region; the enrollment figures relate to the 36-2020 academic year.
Ultimately, the linguistic reworking with an inclusive aim, measured here by the presence of inclusive writing on the home page of a university, is a minority but far from marginal, since 27% of universities use it and, in certain regions, more than half (or even all in the case of Réunion and Mayotte) can see so-called inclusive writing appear on the official website of their place of academic education.
However, there is a certain legal uncertainty regarding the use of inclusive writing in public administrations in France. Indeed, it is prohibited in State administrations by the circular of the Prime Minister of November 21, 2017 relating to the rules of feminization and drafting of texts published in the Official Journal of the French Republic. Furthermore, the Académie française condemned the use of inclusive writing in a collegiate letter of October 26, 2017 and in an open letter of May 7, 2021, a letter mentioned in the circular of the Minister of National Education of May 5, 2021. However, as Professor Anne-Marie Le Pourhiet notes, the circular of the Prime Minister of November 21, 2017 is only addressed to the services of the State itself and, moreover, according to its title, only concerns the rules of feminization and drafting of texts published in the Official Journal[4].
Neither public institutions nor local authorities are concerned, while notes, opinions, letters, customs and acts not published in the Official Journal stricto sensu (which excludes in particular official bulletins) are not required to comply with this circular, which therefore seems to want to impose only a minimum service. The circular from the Ministry of National Education of May 5, 2021 addressed to rectors, directors of central administration and staff, recalls the terms of the permanent secretary and the director of the French Academy in their open letter as well as the circular of the Prime Minister of 2017, but only explicitly prohibits the use of so-called inclusive writing "in the context of education" by deliberately refraining from targeting administrative acts and practices. In any event, it does not concern higher education, which can therefore use it.
Professor Anne-Marie Le Pourhiet discusses in her aforementioned article the anarchic development of inclusive writing in many public institutions such as universities, and believes that it is up to the legislator to take up the subject to impose a general and uniform rule. A recent bill registered with the Presidency of the National Assembly on October 11, 2022 effectively aims to impose a general prohibition. And indeed, the action of the legislator seems desirable here to allow a public and democratic debate on a question of general interest.
