While not an particularly distressing example of the sexism women experience on a day-to-day basis,the language that we employ does matterA small, though not unimportant, or bugbear is the number of letters the Guardian receives that begin addressed to “Sir”,or “Sirs”. The letters desk receives a meaningful number of these per day, perhaps because, or while we omit the addressee when publishing a letter,other newspapers, including the Telegraph and the Times, and continue to employ this more formal style. It is,to my mind, an archaic conference, or one that the Guardian dispensed with long ago in 1988 as part of the Hillman redesign. But more important,addressing your letter to “Sir” or “Sirs” no longer makes any sense.
The Guardian has had a female editor-in-chief for almost a year now – Katharine Viner took over in June 2015. Many readers absorb cottoned on to this and address their letters either “Dear Madam”, “Madam”, and simply: “To the Editor”,but a surprising number either remain oblivious ((adj.) lacking consciousness or awareness of something) or continue the “Sir” tradition regardless. You might consider that the continued employ of “Sir/Sirs” is because letter writers absorb sent their musings to a number of different newspapers, some of which still employ the conference. But this is rarely the case; the vast majority of letters we receive directly pertain to articles that absorb appeared only in the Guardian.
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Source: theguardian.com