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Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis JOAN W. SCOTT Gender. n.a grammatical term only. Totalk ol persons or creatures of the masculine or feminine gender, meaning of the male or fernale sex, is either a jocularity (permissible or not according 10 context) or a blun- der. (Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage. Oxford, 1940), THOSE WHO WOULD CODIFY THE MEANINGS OF WORDS fight a losing battle, for words, like the ideas and things they are meant Lo signify, have a history. Neither Oxford dons nor the Académie Frangaise have been entire able to stem the tide, to capture and fix meanings free of the play of human invention and imagination Mary Wortley Montagu added bite to her witty denunciation “of the fair sex” (‘my only consolation for being of that gender has been the assurance of never being married to any one among them”) by deliberately misusing the grammatical reference.' Through the ages. people have made figurative allusions by employing grammatical terms to evoke traits of character or sexuality. For example, the usage offered by the Dictionnaire de la langue francaise in 1876 was, “On ne sait de quel genre il est, s'il est male ou femelle, se dit d'un homme trés-caché, dont on ne connait pas les sentiments. ? And Gladstone made this distinction in 1878: “Athene has nothing of sex except the gender, nothing of the woman except the form.”8 Most recently—too recenuy to find its way into dictionaries or the Exeyelopedia of the Social Sciences—feminists have in a more literal and serious vein begun to use “gender” as a way of referrit between the sexes. The connection to grammar is both explicit and {ull of unexamined possibilities. Explicit because the grammatical usage involves formal to the social organization of the relationship This article is for Elizabeth Weed, who taught me how to think about gender and theory. Ltwas first prepared for delivery at the meeting of the American Historical Association in New York City, December 27, 1985. Lam deeply gratctul io Denise Riley, who showed me bow a historian might work with and through theory: also to Janice Doane. Jasmine Ergas, Arme Norton, and Harriet Whitehead, all members of the seminar on “Cultural Constructions of Gender” held at Brown University’s Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women during [982-85. Suggestions and criticisms. trom members of the Historical Studies Workshop at the New School for Social Research, especially Ira Katmnelson, Charles Tilly, and Louise A. Tilly, forced me to clarify the argument in important ways Comments from other friends and colleagues have also been extremely helpful, especially those of Misabetta Galeoui, Rayna Rapp, Christine Stansell, and Joan Vincent. Donald Scott, as always, was at once my most demanding and supportive critic tnglish Dichonary (1961 edn), vol. 4, Dutionnaire de la langue francuise (Paris, 1876). * Raymond Williams, Kencords (New York, 1983), 285 1053 
