In the debate on the causes of gentrification, the urban political economic literature has begun to examine the relationships between wider economic transformations and the production of a « new middle class » in the heart of major cities. Yet this approach continues to relegate the gender component in labour force restructuring to secondary conceptual status. We argue that gender relations are constitutive in the emergence of new labour force fractions and new ways of living in inner-city neighbourhoods. To better understand such transformations, we need more profound analyses of reproduction at the household level. We illustrate these arguments with reference to 1971 and 1981 census data on professionals, disaggregated by economic sector and sex, and resident in three inner-city neighbourhoods in Montréal ; and on the structure of the households they live in. It would seem that, far from their comprising a homogeneous group with respect to selection and use of habitat, distinct fractions exist among gentrifiers.