ABSTRACT
Linguists and literary critics may ask different questions about language, and so may philosophers, historians or information technologists. Much sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic research has centred on questions of identity and inequality, but it has been gender-blind. If, for instance, one scans the titles of books and articles on education chronologically, it is easy to see the rise and spread of references to women. Questions of gender are questions of social relations. They are questions of making difference, of power, authority and ‘alternative voices’. The themes of gender studies include socialisation, subjects and subjectivity, hegemony and subversion, and ‘mutedness’, another language-loaded term. Considering the world-wide inequality of educational access for females, one can see how their access to national, authoritative and international language varieties is made doubly difficult. If one wants to understand women’s and men’s language opportunities, one needs to grasp how strategies and resources mesh.
