The article examines the process of transformation of ideas about gender identity on the material of Russian culture of XVI c. and the beginning of the XVIII c. The main goal of the work is the analysis and description of differences in the concept of gender and age characteristics, as well as the description and analysis of the process of the formation of female discourse as independent. According to the authors of the study, the identification of a man and a woman from the point of view of belonging to the home (gender, family) as a whole, which is characteristic of the traditional culture, does not imply an independent gender identity, but only a functional one. At the same time, the fixation of the functions of the wife and husband, as well as servants and children (“Domostroĭ”) leads to the fact that the custom acquires a normative character and, as a result, each of the functions acquires legal independence, which makes it possible, on the one hand, to transfer the structure of the home (as the relationship of functions) to other cultural phenomena (for example, the state), as A. Kurbsky does. On the other hand, the independence of individual functions, the possibility of their absence in the system, the features of such points of view are demonstrated by Ivan IV. Nevertheless, one should admit that on the whole they retain traditional semantic patterns. However, it is this approach that allows independent female images to emerge in the XVII c. embodied by the teachers of the schismatic Morozova and Urusova or princess Sophia. At the beginning of the XVIII c., a complete reformatting of the cultural sphere takes place and one can speak of an independent female discourse as well as the male one. In the second half of the XVIII c., a man and a woman were already perceived separately, although, for example, for M. Shcherbatov it was the result of “damage to morals”.