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Fun with NGrams
Well here’s an interesting one:
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=female+scientist%2C+male+scientist&year_start=1900&year_end=2000
How might these curves be analysed? The term scientist started to be found in books at around the mid 1800s, according to this fascinating website, but to see the phrase ‘female scientist’ was unheard of until 1900. Since then, references have increased sharply with no sign of decline. The phrase ‘male scientist’ was rarely seen until the 1960s, possibly indicating a bias, the assumption being that a scientist would be male and that ‘male scientist’ would appear redundant. This is especially clear if you apply some smoothing to the results at the link above. Since the 1960s, the phrases appear to have increased in usage at the same rate, but ‘male scientist’ starts to overtake ‘female scientist’ in the mid-1990s.
What a thought-provoking little tool this is.
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