Nouns: Gender

In brief, in Russian, as with many other European languages, each noun is assigned a gender. Russian has three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter (neutral).

In the cases of words like “father” these relate to physical gender. In the case of other objects like “pen”, “cup”, “house”, there is no physical meaning attached to the gender. However you will still need to know the gender because it affects how words are formed, what endings adjectives use with them, what endings they themselves take in various cases, and which verb forms they govern.

Luckily, unlike many languages, in Russian it is almost always possible to tell what the gender of a noun by its spelling. When you use a noun as the subject of a sentence, it will be in its dictionary form (nominative case). In this form you can easily work out its gender. If the noun is in another part of the sentence the ending is changed to suit the case.

From the dictionary form of a noun, here is how you can tell what the gender is:
Look at the last letter of the word:

• If it is a hard consonant, or “й”, the word is masculine. 
• If it is “а” or “я” it is feminine unless denoting a male person, e.g. папа daddy, дядя uncle, дедушка grandfather, мужчина man
• Note: a number of nouns ending in “a” and referring to people are “common gender”, taking masculine or feminine adjectives and verbs as required, e.g. левша left-handed person, сирота orphan
• If it is “о” or “е” it is neuter except for кофе coffee, and borrowed words naming animals, e.g. шимпанзе, chimpanzee
• If it is a soft sign “ь” then it could be either masculine or feminine. This is the biggest source of confusion, but there are still some guidelines. 
• Natural gender: Male living things are masculine, e.g. зять son-in-law, кобель male dog, король king, парень young man, lad
• All month names are masculine, e.g. январь January февраль February
• All birds and insects are masculine except выпь bittern, неясить tawny owl, and моль moth
• Suffixes that are masculine: -тель ‘deverbal agent’, i.e., one who or that which does (-er) учитель teacher, двигатель engine (one which moves) and -арь ‘one who is or does’ вратарь goalkeeper, пекарь baker
• Suffixes that are feminine: -ель (not –тель) from verbs гибель death, ruin метель snow storm (this is from a verb root мет) and  -ость abstract nouns (like English –ness) милость kindness, внимательность carefulness
• See slides (linked below) for more
• If it is “у” it is neuter unless naming an animal, when it is masculine, e.g. какаду cockatoo.

 Some examples:

• Masculine : паспорт passport, документ document, брат brother, хлеб bread. 
• Feminine : газета newspaper, Россия Russia, дочь daughter
• Neuter : здание building, радио  radio, письмо letter

Other resources:

Here's the PowerPoint I showed in class.

From Master Russian, Noun number and gender.

From Learning Russian,, Russian gender.

Wikipedia on Russian nouns
 
From Russian for Everyone, gender of nouns explaining hard and soft stems.