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Q&A Everyone's a woman: how do you show that through gender-neutral language?

In my latest short story I'm playing around with common gender misconceptions. It's set in a near future society were men have disappeared, and all roles are taken up by women. The theme is played ...

1 answer  ·  posted 4y ago by Liquid‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by Prahara‭

#1: Initial revision by user avatar Liquid‭ · 2020-06-24T15:42:59Z (almost 4 years ago)
In my latest short story I'm playing around with common gender misconceptions. It's set in a near future society were men have disappeared, and all roles are taken up by women. The theme is played upon, but never outright stated until the last paragraph.

In the first draft of the short story, written in my mother language, I used gender-specific job titles to foreshadow the fact that every single character presented is a woman. 
In English this is more difficult to achieve, as job titles are generally more gender-neutral ([exceptions may apply](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_marking_in_job_titles)). 

My main character finds herself speaking with researchers, CEOs, journalists, news reporters, students and so on. Without further information, they might be men as well as women. 

While I am happy that English is more gender-inclusive, I wonder if I should take action to preserve the foreshadowing in my translation, and if so, how.

So, either

 1. I try to circumvent gender-neutral job titles
 2. I emphasize other clues, e.g. names, physical descriptions, and so on.

**TL;DR: Everyone's a woman: how do you show that through gender-neutral language?**