A classic feminist paper from 1978.
Author(s): Julia P. Stanley
Source: College English, Vol. 39, No. 7 (Mar., 1978), pp. 800-811
Abstract: ‘THE HISTORY OF LANGUAGE, at least what we know of it, is an example of the longevity of male social control and the effects of that control.
The documents concerning the grammar of English that we have were written by men for the edification of other men, and, as such, they deal with male concerns from a male point of view. The contemporary discipline of linguistics, “the scientific study of language,” is only the latest development in the tradition of male control of linguistic descriptions. The masculine tradition in English stretches from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, although its origins go back much farther.’
Preserving Women's Work 