GSA will update its property management regulations to reflect gender inclusive pronouns

The General Services Administration is set to update its regulations governing how the federal government manages real property and related activities to use more gender-inclusive pronouns.

A final rule implementing the tweaks, alongside some other grammatical errors, to a portion of the Federal Management Regulations, the rules which undergird how the federal government handles its physical footprint, is slated for publication in the Federal Register Thursday. In the filing, GSA described the changes as “technical amendments” that are not significant to require a notice-and-comment period.

The vast majority of the changes appear to be the simple replacement of “his/her” with “their.” In other places, the rule removes the presumption that the GSA administrator is a man, replacing male pronouns with “the administrator.” Robin Carnahan, the current Senate-confirmed GSA administrator, is a woman.

In its filing, GSA said the update comes as part of the agency’s implementation of President Biden’s executive order advancing diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility both within the federal workforce and across governmental services to the public. The change will incur no cost on the taxpayer, the agency said.

“The federal government must be a model for diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, where all employees are treated with dignity and respect,” the agency wrote. “Therefore, GSA has undertaken a review of [the Federal Management Regulations].”

Per Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab, using gender-inclusive language not only reflect the changing cultural awareness of LGBTQ+ issues, it’s also just better writing.

“In addition to being respectful of people of all genders, this makes the sentence shorter and easier to say,” reads a post on the subject. “In fact, almost all of us use this language on a regular basis without even thinking about it.”

The changes will go into effect Oct. 21. This marks the second such update undertaken by GSA in recent months, after a similar rule updating federal travel regulations went into effect last April.