It's a gal!

Why do people have such a hard time calling a woman a woman? Why must people persist in calling an adult female a "gal"? I find it particularly offensive to hear women using the term. I hear professional women in a professional context refer to their professional female colleagues as "gals". They're not gals; they're women. Would they refer to their male colleagues as guys? Would they say "ask the guy in HR for his opinion"? But they will say, "We hired a new gal last week."

And men use the term because they can't bring themselves to think about women on an equal footing. We're men, they are saying, and you're just gals. Perhaps the terms "women's liberation" and "women's rights" created a backlash against calling a woman a woman. By avoiding the term, men deny the issue.

The word woman is derived from the Old English wifmann, wimman; meaning WIFE (which derives from a word meaning adult female) + MAN (human being). The word man then referred to a human being of either sex (as in "man does not live by bread alone.") So woman was not a word plucked from man's rib but a word meaning female-human. The derivation of gal developed, of course, as a slang term for girl. But you rarely hear gal used to refer to a girl. Always for an adult female. A woman.

I am woman; hear me roar.