Handbags   (The sad, the bad and the ugly. Non-productive stuff here.)

Gender in English:

'A system of grammatical gender, whereby every noun was treated as either masculine, feminine or neuter, existed in Old English, but fell out of use during the Middle English period.

Modern English retains features relating to natural gender, namely the use of certain nouns and pronouns to refer specifically to persons or animals of one or other sex.

Some aspects of this usage have been influenced by the movement towards a preference for gender-neutral language.

With the exceptions of the traditional, optional uses of she and her pronouns for ships (and analogous machinery) and for nation states (e.g. "Britain and her allies"), all other gender-related grammatical differences have vanished.'