Anyone "can" recite the Gayatri mantra. The only qualification is, she should be able to read, and speak. But is that all there is to the mantra? There is an anecdote in this regard, found in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.
Janaka the king of Videha was once going to a place, carried in a palanquin. While talking to the palanquin bearers he noticed that one of them, was a Kshatriya who used to regularly recite the Gayatri mantram. So he asks the fellow, why, despite calling himself a knower of the Gayatri mantra, he was carrying himself in this degraded condition as a palanquin bearer. That person replied "Sir, I know the lines that form the mantra, but I don't know the mukham (face) of the mantra. Hence I am reduced to this state".
While commenting on the above Shruti, Shankaracharya states "Since he did not know the face of the mantra, his knowledge was imperfect, and hence his recital was fruitless".
The idea broadly expressed here, as I understand it, is that merely knowing the lines of a mantra as found in a book or as heard from a CD, is not going to help one much, and may even lead to a degraded state. When one (male or female) learns it Gurumukhaad, he/she is also imparted some ideas that might / might not be found in books. So if a female wishes to learn a Vedic mantra, it is best if she approaches a Guru or a practitioner who himself received it from a Guru in the past and who is wholeheartedly willing to initiate her. This is how the Parampara works. I am not going to write more on this as I think the point is made clear already.
Janaka the king of Videha was once going to a place, carried in a palanquin. While talking to the palanquin bearers he noticed that one of them, was a Kshatriya who used to regularly recite the Gayatri mantram. So he asks the fellow, why, despite calling himself a knower of the Gayatri mantra, he was carrying himself in this degraded condition as a palanquin bearer. That person replied "Sir, I know the lines that form the mantra, but I don't know the mukham (face) of the mantra. Hence I am reduced to this state".
While commenting on the above Shruti, Shankaracharya states "Since he did not know the face of the mantra, his knowledge was imperfect, and hence his recital was fruitless".
The idea broadly expressed here, as I understand it, is that merely knowing the lines of a mantra as found in a book or as heard from a CD, is not going to help one much, and may even lead to a degraded state. When one (male or female) learns it Gurumukhaad, he/she is also imparted some ideas that might / might not be found in books. So if a female wishes to learn a Vedic mantra, it is best if she approaches a Guru or a practitioner who himself received it from a Guru in the past and who is wholeheartedly willing to initiate her. This is how the Parampara works. I am not going to write more on this as I think the point is made clear already.
