[1] Researchers in sociolinguistics have attempted to provide a unified account and explanation for the gender paradox, with varying levels of success.
One proposed explanation from J. K. Chambers is the notion that women lead sound change because of some inherent biological verbal advantage.
Under that view, women command a greater range of variants and styles, despite similar gender roles, because of sex differences.
[3] That view is contradicted by the varying size of the "gender gap" and the fact that differences have not remained constant over time.
However, that view fails to address the consistently higher use of prestige forms even in contemporary societies with high levels of gender equality.
On the other hand, women tend to have more open and less local networks, which are more likely to use standard variants and have access to innovative forms because of weak ties to other speech communities.
In addition to the difficulties that arise in reconciling the gender paradox itself, other complications have emerged in the methodology and interpretations that led to its discovery.
Evidence of the paradox is widespread in sociolinguistic variation studies that use either sex or gender as a variable, but findings that support the principles are not universal.
Language variations that are chosen by their third-order indexical qualities on a personal, rather than gender-wide level, reflected in the fact that no two women speak exactly alike.
It is inconclusive whether it is something physiologically inherent that makes women more progressive in their language use or if the trend is instead an effect of the role of the female gender within society.
In a 2003 study of the multilingual community of Palau, Kazuko Matsumoto and David Britain examined the functions of prestige forms among women of various age groups.
They found that among Palau women of the parent and grandparent generations, the use of Japanese is considered a conservative behavior since it is used to preserve their ethnic home language.