The author deals with the gender of nouns, a subject developed at length by Meillet in the synchronic and diachronic dimension of Indo-European languages. She shows that the old animate/inanimate distinction has been replaced secondarily by that of masculine/feminine, as she already presented in 1988. The author compares the constraints imposed on the neutral/non-neutral to those submitted to the masculine/feminine. Finally, she takes up the notion of gender that the feminist movement has largely modified and suggests that the renewed interest in the neutral constitutes an – unexpected – extension of Meillet’s ideas.