This paper reviews current research on language and gender and discusses theimplications of such work for gender-based research in second language acquisition. Recentwork in sociolinguistics, generally, and language and gender research, more specifically, hasrejected categorical and fixed notions of social identities in favor of more constructivist anddynamic ones. Thus, in this paper I elaborate a conception of gender that has not generallyinformed research in the field of second language acquisition, and point to more recent work inthe field that theorizes and investigates gender as a construct shaped by historical, cultural,social, and interactional factors.