Line managing someone who talks about "pregnant people" - how to gently tell her to use "woman"?

That's actually true though they can.

I agree with your sentiment totally. My concern is that she'll come back with "No, some people who identify as men or non-binary are capable of being pregnant too".

I know, I know....

I think you've really really misunderstood me. I am GC, have posted other bits in this thread and "pregnant people" is a bullshit piece of fawning to the TRAs.

Not sure why you're picking on me when I'm pretty sure what I wrote was very clear the first time.

Thanks for posting this - very informative. I hadn't appreciated the difference 'pregnant people' could have on statistical analysis.

She's the project leader, so is entitled to have the language she wants used in documents to which her name is attached.

For the people (ha!) above saying it's "not incorrect"... well, sometimes it results in incorrect comparisons, advice, statistics, policy...

For example:

Replacing a word with another of different meaning as if they are synonyms makes communications inaccurate or confusing. For example, in a growing number of papers, the severity of COVID-19 disease in pregnant women is being misrepresented by comparing “pregnant people” to “non-pregnant people” (40, 85–92) when the comparator in the research in question is “non-pregnant females.” Given the greater severity of COVID-19 disease in males (93), this misrepresentation means readers may under-estimate disease severity in pregnant women. Highly regarded organizations like the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (40) and the Australian Department of Health (85) have made this error, and research containing this error has been published in the eminent New England Journal of Medicine (86). In the Australian Department of Health case, the mistake appeared when a previously published document was updated and a seemingly simple and innocuous “find and replace” undertaken with the word “women” switched with “people.” This change made the statistics on disease severity incorrect (see Supplementary Material 1 for further details). Carelessness may partly explain such errors, but there appears to be no easy way to straightforwardly communicate scientific information about female reproduction without using sexed terms. The misrepresentation of research and health communication during a pandemic ought to raise serious concern about how inappropriately desexing language can undermine public health.

And also:

Desexed language can make it unclear who is being referred to. Does “breastfeeding people” mean mothers, infants or both? Are “postnatal people” those who have just given birth or those who are providing postnatal care? Using the phrase “breastfeeding parents” rather than “breastfeeding mothers” or “women,” both suggests the partner is participating in the act of breastfeeding and makes invisible the sex of the person breastfeeding the child. In this way, desexed language obscures the practical and power imbalances in relationships, decision making, and economics that breastfeeding mothers may face because they are female (98–102). Similarly, avoiding references to “girls” means that their very specific vulnerabilities as pregnant minors or minor mothers may be overlooked (103, 104). A mixture of sexed and desexed terminology within the same document can be particularly confusing [e.g. (105–107)]. Assisted reproductive technologies which can separate the genetic, gestational and social contributions to parenting increase the importance of accurate language rather than obscuring matters by using internally contradictory phrases such as “female sperm” as an example (108). We would argue that using “female” to describe a biologically male person with the gender identity of “woman” is inappropriate and that in order to accurately denote the sexes, “male” and female” should be retained as wholly sexed terms (109).

These quotes are from Gribble et al,

I couldn't get riled up about a collegue saying pregnant people if I tried.

I wouldn't micromanage people to this degree.

I'm not going to tell you how to gently get her to speak how you want her to. I'm going to say you need to get over it.

I understand that some mums are crap and some step mums are great.

But the OP is about language in a research project about pregnancy and birth.

Your comments made it sound as though you are advocating for 'pregnant people' to be used instead of 'pregnant women' in that context.

I was wondering what your logic is behind that, when many posters here have described reasons that it is both damaging for women as a whole, and upsetting to some individual women personally.

I was simply stating that not all mums or mothers give birth to their children - adoptive mums are mums, for example.

And not all women who give birth are a good mothers - such as DH's "birth mum" who gave birth to him but is a real piece of work - infliction of childhood abuse, neglect and so on - and so he is estranged from her.

His "real mum" is his step mother who has done more for him (including advocating for him when others hadn't yet understood what his birth mum was doing) than anyone could ever ask of any parent and he considers her to be his proper mum. My MIL is a truly wonderful woman. His birth mother is something else and is known by her first name and not mum as she doesn't deserve the title.

But all those who give birth are women.

No one changes sex. Men are not mothers and identifying as transgender doesn't magically change a man with a penis into a mother instead of a father and it's incredibly damaging when they try to force their kids and wives to participate in the charade.

Pregnant people are all female as they can't be anything else. Clothes do not change the wearers sex.

OK, good, I'm glad that's not what you meant.

Can you clarify?

And another thing! The other charity I was looking at is for testicular cancer. NO WHERE does it say ‘people with a penis’ it says, guess what? Exactly.

You've completely misunderstood me.

Leave a copy of Caroline Criado Perez’ book “Invisible Women” on her desk.
Can you talk about how important it is to focus on women’s health issues? Historically, we didn’t talk about women’s health - menstruation, pregnancy, menopause, symptoms of heart attacks for goodness sake: all never mentioned in polite society. The sixties, seventies and eighties were filled with women given prescriptions of benzodiazepines rather than treatment of their issues.
When we use the word women we are bringing women to the front, giving them importance. Using the word people pushes them back.
I don’t know if that can be imparted in a few short sentences.

But that doesn't answer my question.

I'm not talking about your perceived correctness or otherwise of the word.

I'm asking why the majority of women's feelings don't seem to matter (after all, the only reason the language we were all happy with until recently is being changed at all is to accommodate the feelings of a tiny minority).

Your logic doesn't make sense:

Group A doesn't like word x so we need to change it to word y.

But group B don't like word y (and they're are a lot more of them).

So? Word y is 'more correct' and therefore group Bs feeling are irrelevant.

But if feelings are irrelevant, why make the change in the first place?

Can you see the breakdown in logic here? Unless I'm missing something, it's just pretend logic to try and force people to agree with you.

Being a mother is important to me and to a lot of other women. I don't want that taken away from me.

And if you're going to try to tell me it's only a word, it doesn't matter, then we can bloody well keep 'mother', thank you very much!

Ok, let me rephrase.
What is the value or point of using the phrase "pregnant people" rather than "pregnant women"?

It isn't important to me not to use it. If you'd read the thread, you'd see I agree that "pregnant women" is clearer.

But it's false to say that "pregnant people" is an incorrect usage.

Not all mums are a birthing parent, but all birthing parents are female. It's the common denominator.