Women were less constrained than men in letting the current social network determine the choice of Hungarian or German. Rather, they were in advance of men in their choice of German. Gal argues that rejection of the use of local Hungarian was part of the rejection by younger women of peasant status and peasant life generally. However, the possibility of a young man taking over the family farm could bring some advantages over wage labour, such as independence.
On the other hand, women do not want to be peasants; they do not present themselves as peasants in speech. Gender and matrimonial relations seem to play a significant part in a number of other language-shift situation. One such case involves the Yaaku of Kenya. Why did the Yaaku give up their language (consciously, if the sources are to be believed) in favour of the Maa language? After the more dominant group of Maasai moved into the traditional area of the Yaaku, there was a gradual decline in endogamy among the Yaaku.
Whereas traditionally Yaaku girls receive beehives as wedding gifts (i.e., bridewealth) when they began marrying Maasai men they received livestock instead. Soon Yaaku parents began demanding this from Yaaku men as well, necessitating a traumatic change in lifestyle for younger Yaaku men, They had to acquire cattle by serving as herders for the Maasai.
This brought them closer to the Maasai in lifestyle since pastoralism (keeping cattle) involved a more sedentary lifestyle than hunting and gathering. Marriage between Yaaku men Maasai women then became a possibility. The children of such marriages became monolingual in the dominant language.
According to the passage, the children of Yaaku men and Maasai women became:
