What are the staff of the Australian National University asked to do?

Staff at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra have been requested to avoid the use of certain words related to gender. ANU’s Gender Institute issued a list of replacement terms for everyday words like ’mother’ and ’father’. The switch in vocabulary is part of an initiative to encourage more gender-neutral language. Staff are being asked to use the term ’gestational parent’ instead of ’mother,’ and ’non-birthing-parent’ in place of ’ father’. The institute’s gender handbook claims the words ’mother’ and ’father’ exclude non-binary people. These are people who identify as being neither male nor female. Non-binary people feel unrepresented in society because of words that refer to males and females.