1.Introduction 2. Structural properties 2.1 Grammatical gender 2.2 Gender agreement 2.3 The morphological structure of personal nouns 2.3.1 Derivation 2.3.2 Compounding 3. The lexical representation of women and men 4. Gender and reference 4.1 Gender-specific reference and agreement conflicts 4.2 Gender-indefinite reference and generic masculines 4.3 The endearing use of the masculine gender 4.4 Summary 5. The interpretation of generic masculines: Empirical evidence 5.1 Personal nouns with specific reference 5.2 Personal nouns with more generic reference 5.3 Metalinguistic test 6. Linguistic gender studies in Russia 6.1 Proverbs and idioms 6.1.1 The androcentric perspective 6.1.2 Ženskij golos – ‘The female voice’ 6.1.3 ‘Woman/wife’ 6.1.4 ‘Mother’ 6.1.5 The “pseudo-female” perspective 6.2 Obscene expressions – a male domain? 7.Language politics 8.Suggestions for future research Notes References