These Industries Use Gender-Neutral Language Least Often
A study of 2.3 million German companies found that over 90 percent reject gender-neutral language on their websites, with usage highest in urban centers like Berlin at 13.5 percent.
A comprehensive new analysis of over 2.3 million German companies has revealed that gender-neutral language remains a fringe practice in the country’s business sector, with more than 90 percent of firms rejecting the ideologically driven linguistic trend on their websites.
According to Junge Freiheit, data service provider Listflix conducted the study in August 2026, scanning the online presence of approximately 2.33 million German businesses for common gendering forms including asterisks, colons, slashes, bracketed endings, and internal capitalization. The findings show that only 9.2 percent of German firms, around 214,000 in total, use gendered language on their websites, while over 2.1 million companies avoid it entirely. The analysis represents what is likely the most comprehensive picture to date of gender-neutral language use across Germany’s corporate landscape.
Urban Centers Lead in Gendering, Eastern States Resist
Regional differences proved striking. The city-states recorded the highest rates of gendering: Berlin led at 13.5 percent, Bremen followed at 13.3 percent, and Hamburg at 12.9 percent. The lowest adoption rates were found in eastern German states, with Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania at 6.5 percent, Thuringia at 6.8 percent, and Saxony at 7.7 percent.
At the district level, the divide became even more pronounced. The university city of Freiburg im Breisgau topped the rankings with 15.7 percent of companies using gendered language, followed by Münster at 15.1 percent and Osnabrück at 14.8 percent. The Thuringian town of Suhl recorded the nation’s lowest rate at just 4.5 percent.
Customer Proximity Correlates With Language Sanity
A clear relationship emerged between company size and gendering practices. Large corporations with more than 250 employees showed a 20.7 percent gendering rate, while medium-sized businesses came in at 15.8 percent. Small businesses, micro-enterprises, and freelancers all registered rates just below 9 percent. The pattern suggests a straightforward conclusion: the smaller a business and the closer it operates to customers, the more likely it is to avoid gendering madness.
The sector analysis proved equally revealing. Educational institutions led with a 22.7 percent gendering rate, followed by retail at 19.7 percent and healthcare at 15.5 percent. Restaurants registered just 3.3 percent, while automotive businesses came in at 4.2 percent.
Specific sub-sectors showed extreme variations. Alarmingly, 70.3 percent of all hospitals use gendered language, as do 60.6 percent of laboratories, 50.7 percent of vocational training institutions, and 44.3 percent of grammar schools. The education findings carry particular weight, as these institutions shape the next generation and should be transmitting proper German language skills that gendering undermines. By contrast, only 5.1 percent of export-oriented companies and 7.6 percent of real estate firms employ the practice.
Linguistic Experts Condemn Gender Ideology
Resistance from the linguistic community has mounted steadily over recent years. Among the most prominent critics stands Peter Eisenberg, a Potsdam-based linguist and winner of the Jacob Grimm Prize for the German language. He has consistently defended the so-called generic masculine, the gender-neutral use of masculine forms such as “Lehrer” (teachers) or “Kunden” (customers).
Eisenberg and a large segment of the German population agree that grammatical gender says nothing about biological sex and that women are not excluded by standard usage. Rather than accepting that German already contains everything needed to avoid gender-based discrimination, ideologues in positions of power are waging a proxy war that mangles the language, Eisenberg explained in a 2018 interview with the Federal Agency for Civic Education.
The Council for German Orthography, the authoritative body that sets official rules for the entire German-speaking world, delivered a clear rejection of gendering in 2023. The council determined that gender stars, colons, internal capitals, and underscores do not belong to the core inventory of German orthography. The council’s statement specified that gender-appropriate language is a social and sociopolitical task that cannot be solved through orthographic rules and spelling changes.
German Public Increasingly Rejects Imposed Language
Beyond linguistic objections, many critics view gendering as a political project that forces a particular vision of society and gender onto the population.
Polling has consistently documented the lack of public support for gendered language in Germany, with opposition steadily growing. In 2020, according to an Infratest Dimap survey conducted exclusively for Welt am Sonntag, 56 percent of eligible voters rejected the use of internal capitals, asterisks, and similar forms in media and public discourse. One year later, that figure had climbed to 65 percent, and subsequent surveys show the trend continuing.
A 2025 representative poll by YouGov found that a substantial majority of Germans, 68 percent, do not want to use gendered language. This public sentiment aligns with the low corporate adoption rate documented in the Listflix analysis, bringing the picture full circle.
With information from Junge Freiheit
