I am trying to populate a drop down list of items. I am using MVC4 with the twitter bootstrap styling, on visual studio 2012.

The code that I have for the controller is:

```
String[] genders =  { "Male","Female","Other"};
ViewBag.genders = new SelectList(genders);

```

And in my view is:

```
@Html.DropDownListFor("genders", "Select a gender", new { @class = "form-control" })

```

However, I get an error: 

> 
> 'The type arguments for method
>  'System.Web.Mvc.Html.SelectExtensions.DropDownListFor(System.Web.Mvc.HtmlHelper,
>  System.Linq.Expressions.Expression>,
>  System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable,
>  object)' cannot be inferred from the usage. Try specifying the type
>  arguments explicitly.'
> 
> 
> 

I have tried various other forms of the statement. But basically I would like to keep the controller as is and edit the statements in the view. But I am open to anything which people are willing to suggest that will help me solve this issue.

Thanks in advance