> I'm not saying anything about anyone's intent, but replacing "man-year" with "person-year" is a painless, traditional-grammar-friendly way to go gender-neutral.
It is not painless: it is dissonant and takes another syllable.
One might argue that is worth the pain and stylistic cost of infelicitous phrasing in order to be sex-neutral or welcoming or whatever, and that might indeed be the case.
I think that language is far less important here than culture. Persian, for example, is a genderless language: it has no 'he' or 'her,' no 'waiter' or 'waitress,' no 'actor' or 'actress.' And yet I think most folks would say that Iran is far less gender-neutral than any English-speaking country.
It is not painless: it is dissonant and takes another syllable.
One might argue that is worth the pain and stylistic cost of infelicitous phrasing in order to be sex-neutral or welcoming or whatever, and that might indeed be the case.
I think that language is far less important here than culture. Persian, for example, is a genderless language: it has no 'he' or 'her,' no 'waiter' or 'waitress,' no 'actor' or 'actress.' And yet I think most folks would say that Iran is far less gender-neutral than any English-speaking country.