Phonetic studies of phonological contrasts in features such as vowel height and consonant voicing have revealed a gender difference: phonetic correlates of phonological contrasts produced by women tend to be more distinct in acoustic and temporal space than those produced by men. However, these studies have been constrained by their dichotomous approach to gender. This article examines withinsex variation in phonetic correlates of phonological contrasts among eight American male radio disc jockeys. four variables were examined: vowel space dispersion, consonant lenition, and two types of vowel length contrast. The social characteristics of the DJs were enumerated by having listeners rate each voice on 10 Likert scales. These ratings were aggregated into four components, which were interpreted as masculinity (i.e., gender), social class, regional accent, and personality. Two of these, masculinity and regional accent, showed significant correlations with the phonetic variables, demonstrating that phonetic distinctiveness correlates with speakers' social characteristics. a growing area of phonetic research is the production and perception of clear speech. Most of the research had focused on phonetic correlates of clear speech, such as the amount of overlap of voice onset time distributions (Chen 1980). However, studies such as Bradlow, Torretta, and Pisoni (1996) also looked at the sex of the talker and found that listeners transcribed speech spoken by female talkers significantly more accurately than the speech spoken by male talkers. Phonetic analysis determined that the female talkers spoke with more dispersed vowels and more precise articulation of consonants (i.e., less assimilation and lenition). These results mirror the general findings of studies on gender differences in articulation. These studies, several of which are reviewed below, find that women tend to produce acoustic and temporal phonetic correlates of phonological contrasts more distinctly than men. 1