Abstract：
Proverbs, as a quite important part of language, reflect the colorful life of people throughout history. To a great extent, proverbs can show the values and beliefs of human beings. Thus, proverbs are more representative and persuasive to be used to probe into the social problems in language. However, some proverbs tend to be sex bias, which females are defamed and valueless. This paper discusses the phenomenon of female discrimination in English proverbs with a great number of examples from the five aspects of status, marriage, words, wisdom and troublemakers, then try to analyses the causes of the phenomenon from three standpoints of unequal division of labor, the prevailing chauvinism, the religion and traditional ideology in historical roots, social reality and cultural influences of western countries. The thesis aims to expose sex discrimination through analyzing English proverbs, thereby helping improve people’s awareness, to better modify sex bias language, so as to reduce even eliminate the sexism phenomenon in language and daily life and to enhance greatly the social status of women. As a result, the concept of men and women being equal will sink deep into the hearts of people.

Key words: English proverb; sex bias; sexism language; women's status

摘  要：
谚语作为语言很重要的一部分，揭示了人们的生活状况，在很大程度上反映了人们的价值观和信仰，因此从谚语方面探讨社会问题更具有广泛的代表性和极强的说服力。然而有一部分的英语谚语表达出对女性性别歧视的这一社会现象。本文利用大量实例从女性的地位，婚姻，言语，智慧和爱惹事生非五个方面阐述了英语谚语中反映女性歧视的现象，并且从不公平的劳动分工，盛行的大男子主义思潮和西方国家的传统宗教理念这三个角度分析了性别歧视形成的历史根源、社会现实和文化影响。旨在通过对英语谚语的分析揭示语言中对女性的歧视，从而提高人们对这一现象的认识，继而减少甚至消除在日常生活及语言中的性别歧视现象，使歧视性的语言得以改善，最终提高女性的社会地位，使男女平等的观念深入人心。

关键词：英语谚语；性别歧视；歧视语言；女性地位

1 Introduction
According to Alleen Pace Nilsem, language and society are as intertwined as a chicken and an egg. Thus language and culture are closely related, culture influences and shapes language and in turn language reflects culture. Proverbs, as the essence of language, are the concentration of culture and social life. And they can reflect geography, history, views, behavior and system of the society even the people’s opinions toward social reality.     Furthermore, proverbs are rich in pithiness, frankness, appeal and handed down by mouth and ear, they can be remembered easily and spread universally both in folk and society generation by generation. Proverbs thus exert a deep and pervasive influence on both individuals and the whole society. It however exists the side effects obviously. The culture consists of sexism, which in return naturally exists in English proverbs.