Abstract
<jats:p>The study aims to identify the means of verbalizing feminine reference in relation to professional activity and occupation, comparing word-formation models (e.g., агентша, агентка, агентесса ‘agent’) with gender-neutral vocabulary (агент ‘agent’, партнёр ‘partner’, инспектор ‘inspector’) and their co-occurring words in specific grammatical forms (e.g., агент предоставила доказательство ‘the agent [masc. noun] provided [fem. verb] evidence’). The scientific novelty lies in the comparative determination of the means for verbalizing feminine reference by profession – through suffixal word formation versus neutral vocabulary with gender-grammatical marking of agreed words. The study establishes that within the framework of gender specification, i.e., the use of femitinitives (e.g., авторша, авторка, авторесса, авторица ‘author’) derived from gender-neutral masculine nouns (автор ‘author’, агент ‘agent’, гримёр ‘make-up artist’, etc.), the highest frequency is demonstrated by colloquial lexemes with the suffix - ш - . Significantly lower frequencies (in descending order) are shown by the suffixes -к-, -ес(с)-, -иц-, and -х(а)-. According to data from the Russian National Corpus, the use of gender-neutral normative vocabulary combined with grammatical markers of femininity occupies an intermediate position between them.</jats:p>