Author: Avegail T. Temporal

Abstract: Despite policy frameworks mandating gender equality in Philippine education, masculine-centric linguistic defaults persist in classrooms. This study assessed Senior High School students' awareness of Gender-Fair Language (GFL), their attitudes toward its classroom use, its perceived impact on inclusive culture, and the interventions needed to support a Gender-Fair Language Lexicon at Colegio de San Rafael Arcangel, Inc. A quantitative design was employed using random sampling; a researcher-developed, expert-validated sixty-item Likert-scale survey was administered and analyzed through mean, standard deviation, and rank. Findings reveal that students are Moderately Aware of Gender-Fair Language and hold a Somewhat Positive attitude toward its use, strongest for institutionalized occupational substitutions and weakest for non-binary honorifics. Attitudinal endorsement was strong at the normative level but inconsistent in habitual application. The study concludes that the school community exists in a state of "passive readiness" — adequate cognitive understanding without the structural mechanisms for consistent practice. In response, In Fairness: A Lexicon for Inclusive Communication was developed as a localized, faith-aligned instructional resource.

Keywords: Catholic education, gender-fair language, inclusive communication, lexicon, linguistic recalibration

Article Info: Received: 09 Apr 2026; Received in revised form: 05 May 2026; Accepted: 09 May 2026; Available online: 13 May 2026

DOI: 10.22161/ijels.113.13