Leading international companies have conducted special studies that have shown that men are

skeptical about working in translation centers. In their opinion, this is not prestigious and to
some extent humiliating. They treat this profession with contempt due to the fact that there is no
opportunity for them to control the whole situation and subjugate other people. And in fact it is
so. Translators do not have the right to contradict the will of the client, they must listen to his
wishes, take into account all claims and correct any inconsistencies. Such actions can hurt the
sensitive nature of men and undermine their authority in the team.

Women, on the other hand, distinguish such a profession with a high status and the opportunity
to move up the career ladder. For them, this is a great chance to show themselves as an excellent
employee and thus make themselves a good career.

Male students are outnumbered by female students in most subjects at most UK universities. The
most popular theory is that girls and boys process languages differently. It has been proven that
when learning languages, girls’ brains show greater activity in the areas used for language
encoding. Boys’ brains, on the other hand, show more activity in the areas associated with visual
and aural functions. Thus, while girls can more easily process an abstract piece of language, boys
need some sensory reinforcement to process the data. For males, the most effective way to study
language is to learn visually (seeing the word written down) as well as orally (through listening
and repetition). Men’s brains are more analytical and thus they tend to prefer structured work,
whereas women tend to be more intuitive and prefer the liberal arts. Furthermore, girls are more
likely to get creative with the learning process than boys. Studies have also proven that female
learners are four times more likely than males to chat with native speakers of their target
language and that women are more willing to risk embarrassing themselves, an essential part of
studying a foreign language at one time or another. The social connections and friendships that
can stem from a conversation are also stronger motivators to women than to men. Furthermore, it
has been suggested that women are more driven by personal rewards (and language learning is
known to be a very rewarding skill) whereas men are driven by other factors such as status or
position.

Part of the problem is perhaps the fact that languages are perceived as a female domain (in the
way that engineering may be perceived as a male domain). The stereotyping of ‘female’ and
‘male’ subjects surely leaves its effect on us at some point down the line. For example, language
teachers at primary and secondary school levels are typically women, meaning that children from
a young age associate languages with their female instructors and therefore more girls will look
up to them as role models.