1656: Rhoticity and Women Jun 27, 2019

As a general sociolinguistic rule, when linguistic changes begin to occur, it is women who are leading the change. This was noticed by sociolinguists in the 1970's and 1980's, but evidence of this goes back much further. For instance, British English used to be rhotic—i.e. did not delete R from the ends of words etc.—and while the change was gradual, there is evidence to suggest that women were employing this much more than men. Starting in the 17th century, signs of non-rhoticity began to appear in writing, mostly in personal letters, and of those mostly from women. Rhoticity will be talked about in depth soon, (see more below) but this process can be said about many more changes, even those going on today in many cases.
See more on rhoticity here: /stonewordfacts/2018/10/1412-rhoticitys-relationship-with.html