The fact
Women don’t like to be addressed in masculine. That shouldn’t be a surprise, but it happens a lot. More frequently than you may think. That’s mainly because English is a non-gendered language, but Galician, Spanish and many more languages are gendered.
Addressing all of your audience in masculine is excluding all your female audience. It’s showing them that they don’t matter to you, that they aren’t really part of your target audience. If you don’t bother addressing them correctly, why should they bother buying your products or services?
The solution
For signed-in users, adapting the translation based on their gender is the best option, as it shows your female users that they are important, that you are directly speaking to them as if you were face to face. This can be done via ICU message syntax, which will allow you to select different genders (female, male, non-binary and even an option for unknown gender).
For all the other texts, using a gender-neutral approach will be the best solution. This does not mean losing focus, just adapting your messages regardless of the reader gender. Because unless your audience is 100% male, you should not be addressing them in generic masculine.
Some real examples
Here you have some localized emails I have received in Spanish addressing me in masculine and how I would fix them:
(…), estar suscrito a nuestro contenido tiene sus recompensas y sus regalitos.
(…), haberte / que te hayas suscrito a nuestro contenido tiene sus recompensas y sus regalitos.
No estás solo. Muchos profesionales digitales tienen (…)
No te pasa solo a ti. Muchos profesionales digitales tienen (…)
¿Listo para ir más allá?
¿Todo listo para ir más allá?
¡Bienvenido de nuevo, Paloma!
¡Qué bien que hayas vuelto, Paloma!
Every time a woman accesses a service and sees “Bienvenido” addressing her in masculine, something breaks inside her. A wall starts building between her and the service, and every new generic masculine reference is a new brick. At a certain point, the wall will be so high she can no longer see what the service offers, just a big wall of “You don’t belong here”. Don’t build walls, remove barriers instead.