Gower's works contain a great deal of comment on the nature and character of women, drawing on established medieval ideologies of gender to measure their conduct against ideals of femininity. However, the principal concern of both the Vox Clamantis and the Mirour de l’Omme is the sinfulness of men, delineated by their social status and occupation, including tactics for the wholesale reform of male immorality. Women barely feature in Gower's discussion of the estates of society in either work, although he does include three chapters on nuns in the Vox Clamantis. While Gower acknowledges that there are virtuous nuns who do correctly carry out their duties, in common with his assertions about men in religious orders (and, indeed, in society as a whole), the emphasis is on those who do not. With respect to nuns this entails a rehearsal of conventional antifeminist invective:

Similarly, while Chapter 6 of Book V of the Vox Clamantis sets out to speak about the good woman, the majority of the chapter confirms Gower's contention that:

Most of the chapter describes women in conventionally misogynistic terms as deceitful, conniving, shameless and fundamentally deleterious to men: ‘Neither the strength of Samson nor the sword of David nor the wisdom of Solomon is of any worth against her’ (V.6.459–60). Gower's discussion of marriage in the Mirour de l’Omme is more even-handed in its recognition of the benefits which a good woman can offer her husband, alongside the harm which an evil wife can do. But, in keeping with the contemporary assumption that men were inherently superior to women, the good wife is characterised as being entirely subservient: ‘modest and gracious, in deed, word, and counte-nance, without doing anything displeasing to her husband’ (17689–17700).