авторка and директорка: Feminine Job Titles in Ukrainian

In Ukrainian, “writer” or “author” is автор. To refer to a female author, there is the word авторка. директорка corresponds to директор (principal, director), and студентка to студент (student), in the same way. A suffix is added to a masculine noun to form a noun denoting a woman.

Below, this article sets out how such forms are built, based on Український правопис as it took effect as the State Language Standard on March 28, 2026 (the “2026 Standard” below), the 2019 edition and the 1993 4th edition of the orthography that it is based on, Українська мова. Енциклопедія (the Encyclopedia of the Ukrainian Language, 2nd edition, 2004, compiled by two institutes of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine; the “Encyclopedia” below), and the Academy’s dictionaries. Confirmed as of September 2026.

Four Suffixes Named in the Orthography

§32 of the 2026 Standard is the section setting out how noun suffixes are written. Its item 4 states, “nouns denoting women are formed from masculine nouns using suffixes such as -к-(-а), -иц-(-я), -ин-(-я), and -ес-(-а),” and explains each suffix as follows.

Many of the examples are job titles, but words like бойкиня and лемкиня, which are not occupations but names for groups of people, are included too. The section’s own wording is not limited to “job titles” but covers “nouns denoting women” generally. The Boiko and Lemko groups are covered in our article on the Hutsuls, Boikos, and Lemkos of the Carpathians.

The same §32 also sets out, in item 12, the suffixes -івн-(-а) / -ївн-(-а) used to form a woman’s patronymic (Борисівна, Сергіївна, and so on). How patronymics are used is summarized in our article on Ukrainian personal names.

A Provision Missing From the 1993 Edition

This item 4 did not exist in the 1993 4th edition of the orthography. The 1993 edition’s §22, which covers noun suffixes, sets out -ик/-ник, -ив-(о), -альник, -ень/-ець/-ість/-тель, -инн-(я), the diminutive -ечок, the surname suffix -енк-(о), the patronymic suffixes -ович/-івн-(а), and others across 13 items, but forming nouns denoting women is not among them.

The 2019 edition added the same content as §32, item 4. The list of new provisions in the 2019 edition is given in our article, “The 2019 Orthography Became a ‘State Language Standard’ Seven Years Later”, and this §32 is one row of its table.

What Changed Between the 2019 Edition and the 2026 Standard

§32, item 4 of the 2026 Standard carries over the 2019 edition’s text almost unchanged, but a few example words and phrasings differ.

In an announcement on March 27, 2026, the Ministry of Culture explained that the text of the Standard received editorial corrections such as fixing misprints, adding examples, and clarifying wording, but that these do not affect settled rules. Neither the text of the Standard nor the Ministry’s announcement explains why філологиня and дияконеса dropped out of the examples.

The Dictionaries Had These Words Long Before

The orthography only made this an explicit rule in 2019, but the words themselves have appeared in dictionaries well before that. The Academy’s 11-volume dictionary (volume 1, 1970) gives АВТОРКА as a headword, defined as “the feminine form of автор.” The current 20-volume dictionary has headwords and examples such as the following.

Some of these examples are about the feminine form itself. Here is a passage the 20-volume dictionary cites, from Lesya Ukrainka, under ПОЕТЕСА.

Наші критики .. ставлять в одну лінію і поетів і поетес, і літераторів і літераток; не знаю, як хто, а я не раз казала їм за се спасибі (“Our critics … place poets and poetesses, writers and women writers, all in the same line; I don’t know about others, but I have more than once thanked them for it”)

An example cited by the 20-volume Словник української мови under “ПОЕТЕ́СА” (Lesya Ukrainka). English translation by the editors

How to read dictionary headwords is covered in our article on how to use Ukrainian dictionaries.

The Encyclopedia’s Explanation: “Моція”

The Encyclopedia explains the formation of nouns denoting women from masculine nouns under the entry “Моція” (“Motion”). This entry sorts suffixes into types, distinguishing those that still commonly form new words from those that no longer do.

• Types that commonly form new words: -к-(а) (блондинка, школярка, француженка, and so on) and -иц-(я) (дослідниця, “researcher”; робітниця, “worker”; and so on). These often denote occupation, ethnicity, or place of residence (лікарка, українка, киянка, “a woman of Kyiv”; волинянка, “a woman of Volyn”)
• Types that no longer form new words much: -их-(а) and -ш-(а) denote “that person’s wife” (бондариха, “a cooper’s wife”; генеральша, “a general’s wife”; фермерша, “a farmer’s wife”). -ш-(а) is used in colloquial speech
• Types that no longer form new words at all: -ин-(я) (графиня, “countess”; княгиня, “princess/duchess”), -ов-(а) (королева, “queen”), and so on
• Borrowed suffixes are also not much used: -ес-(а) (баронеса, поетеса, стюардеса, “stewardess”), -ис-(а) (актриса, “actress”; директриса, “female principal”)

Although the Encyclopedia places -ин-(я) among the types that no longer form new words, the 2019 edition and the 2026 Standard cite examples such as майстриня and продавчиня, treating -ин-(я) as one of the usable suffixes. For директор’s feminine form, too, the Encyclopedia gives -ис-(а)’s директриса, while the 2026 Standard gives -к-(а)’s директорка.

Not Using a Feminine Form: “директор прийшла”

There is also a way of referring to a woman that keeps the masculine noun unchanged. The Encyclopedia’s “Моція” entry notes that, under the influence of official-style prose, masculine nouns such as академік (academician), декан (dean), директор, генетик (geneticist), and оптик (optician) are sometimes used to name a woman by her occupation or position. As a result, it adds, phrases have become more common such as директор прийшла (“the director [female] came”) or наша директор (“our [female] director”), where the noun stays masculine and only the past-tense verb or an adjective/pronoun takes the feminine form.

The same entry goes on to say that, even so, the tendency distinctive to Ukrainian of forming feminine words with a suffix is growing ever stronger, citing авторка, аспірантка (graduate student), викладачка (lecturer), діячка (activist), редакторка, лікарка, and депутатка (member of parliament). The entry “Рід” (“Grammatical gender”) likewise lists, side by side, two ways of marking a person’s sex: forming a word with a suffix, as in автор — авторка, and showing it through the form of a word combined with the noun, as in біолог працювала (“the biologist [female] was working”).

§32, item 4 of the 2026 Standard is a provision on how to form feminine words. This section contains no statement treating the use of a masculine noun to refer to a woman as an error. Which way of referring to a woman to choose is not settled by §32 of the Standard alone.

The History of the Feminine Form

Words with the diminutive sense of -к- (such as ручка) work differently from the feminine-forming -к-(-а). Diminutive forms are covered in our article on Ukrainian diminutive forms.