Washington State Now Has Gender-Neutral Laws

Transcript

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Good morning, I'm David Greene.

It was a yeoman's task but they would never put it that way in Washington State. The state just completed a six-year effort to rewrite its laws using gender-neutral language. Terms like fisherman and freshman were replaced by fisher and first-year student. Penmanship became handwriting. More than 3,000 sections of the law were revised but some words did not change. Manhole and man lock are words that survived; they just couldn't find a better way of saying them.

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