“The boy”, “the girl”: Even if we remain in this traditional separation of the sexes, it is still irritating to note that the female form of the child exists only in the neuter form in German (“Maedchen”), i.e. as a thing. Now, grammatically this is due to the fact that all words with the word ending “chen” in the German language are grammatically neuter. However, it is disturbing that there is no “Jungchen”: he remains him. This blatant gender difference only becomes understandable when looking at the etymology: the “girl” is derived from the “maid” (in English “maid”), i.e. always already from a person intended for subservient service and not for domination. Consequently, the colloquial form of a “maid for everything” is derived from the German language, which since the first half of the 19th century has determined the (mostly) female servants in bourgeois houses, because these could no longer afford various employees such as maids, cooks, gardeners, etc., and therefore employed a maid.

Even in a supposedly harmless word like “girl”, gender inequality is once again perpetuated – which does not discredit the female children, adolescents (and formerly also adults), but rather their socially accepted objectification.