This talk examines how person, number, and gender features are encoded in a typologically diverse sample of independent pronominal systems. Empirically, it focuses on the typological variation in the featural make-up of personal pronouns, as well as on the limits of this variation. Specifically, it shows that, while robust generalisations can be drawn in the domains of person and number, variation in the gender domain appears to resist similar abstractions. Theoretically, this talk aims to explain these observations. On the one hand, it proposes that the attested generalisations can be traced back to the syntax of person and number features: the assumption that these features are not bundled together, but rather merged within the spine of personal pronouns in a step-wise fashion, is shown to account for the (un)attested patterns of variation. On the other hand, it discusses the implications of the present findings for the syntax of gender.