If there’s one thing I can’t do around my wife (and, like most husbands, there are a LOT of things I can’t do around my wife ), I can’t refer to a woman with the word “girl.” This usually turns into a debate about gender bias, language, and the state of feminism, the glass ceiling, and random assorted goodness. For the record, I think American English lacks an informal word for woman that would be the equivalent of the word “guy”… Heidi doesn’t disagree necessarily but finds “girl” loaded with connotations about women as helpless or immature compared to men.

We usually end up agreeing to disagree, but there are a few things we do agree on. For one thing, gender equality is still as much a dream as it is a reality. What I mean is that for all the advances women have made both in the workplace as well as in society, a number of challenges still exist for women. An editorial in the Dallas Morning News lays out one of the more insidious forms of gender bias in our media. These biases reinforce so-called traditional gender roles and undermine those women who are choosing to get out into the workforce. Read the article and leave a comment… interested in what folks have to say.

(via Atrios’s blog, though not Atrios himself)