essay on gender studies

Gender Studies: Foundations and Key Concepts

Gender studies developed alongside and emerged out of Women’s Studies. This non-exhaustive list introduces readers to scholarship in the field.

Gender studies asks what it means to make gender salient, bringing a critical eye to everything from labor conditions to healthcare access to popular culture. Gender is never isolated from other factors that determine someone’s position in the world, such as sexuality, race, class, ability, religion, region of origin, citizenship status, life experiences, and access to resources. Beyond studying gender as an identity category, the field is invested in illuminating the structures that naturalize, normalize, and discipline gender across historical and cultural contexts.

At a college or university, you’d be hard pressed to find a department that brands itself as simply Gender Studies. You’d be more likely to find different arrangements of the letters G, W, S, and perhaps Q and F, signifying gender, women, sexuality, queer, and feminist studies. These various letter configurations aren’t just semantic idiosyncrasies. They illustrate the ways the field has grown and expanded since its institutionalization in the 1970s.

This non-exhaustive list aims to introduce readers to gender studies in a broad sense. It shows how the field has developed over the last several decades, as well as how its interdisciplinary nature offers a range of tools for understanding and critiquing our world.

Catharine R. Stimpson, Joan N. Burstyn, Domna C. Stanton, and Sandra M. Whisler, “Editorial.” Signs , 1975; “Editorial,” off our backs , 1970

The editorial from the inaugural issue of Signs , founded in 1975 by Catharine Stimpson, explains that the founders hoped that the journal’s title captured what women’s studies is capable of doing: to “represent or point to something.” Women’s studies was conceptualized as an interdisciplinary field that could represent issues of gender and sexuality in new ways, with the possibility of shaping “scholarship, thought, and policy.”

The editorial in the first issue of off our backs , a feminist periodical founded in 1970, explains how their collective wanted to explore the “dual nature of the women’s movement:” that “women need to be free of men’s domination” and “must strive to get off our backs.” The content that follows includes reports on the Equal Rights Amendment, protests, birth control, and International Women’s Day.

Robyn Wiegman, “Academic Feminism against Itself.” NWSA Journal , 2002

Gender studies developed alongside and emerged out of Women’s Studies, which consolidated as an academic field of inquiry in the 1970s. Wiegman tracks some of the anxieties that emerged with the shift from women’s to gender studies, such as concerns it would decenter women and erase the feminist activism that gave rise to the field. She considers these anxieties as part of a larger concern over the future of the field, as well as fear that academic work on gender and sexuality has become too divorced from its activist roots.

Jack Halberstam, “Gender.” Keywords for American Cultural Studies, Second Edition (2014)

Halberstam’s entry in this volume provides a useful overview for debates and concepts that have dominated the field of gender studies: Is gender purely a social construct? What is the relationship between sex and gender? How does the gendering of bodies shift across disciplinary and cultural contexts? How did the theorizing of gender performativity in the 1990s by Judith Butler open up intellectual trajectories for queer and transgender studies? What is the future of gender as an organizing rubric for social life and as a mode of intellectual inquiry? Halberstam’s synthesis of the field makes a compelling case for why the study of gender persists and remains relevant for humanists, social scientists, and scientists alike.

Miqqi Alicia Gilbert, “Defeating Bigenderism: Changing Gender Assumptions in the Twenty-First Century.” Hypatia , 2009

Scholar and transgender activist Miqqi Alicia Gilbert considers the production and maintenance of the gender binary—that is, the idea that there are only two genders and that gender is a natural fact that remains stable across the course of one’s life. Gilbert’s view extends across institutional, legal, and cultural contexts, imagining what a frameworks that gets one out of the gender binary and gender valuation would have to look like to eliminate sexism, transphobia, and discrimination.

Judith Lorber, “Shifting Paradigms and Challenging Categories.” Social Problems , 2006

Judith Lorber identifies the key paradigm shifts in sociology around the question of gender: 1) acknowledging gender as an “organizing principle of the overall social order in modern societies;” 2) stipulating that gender is socially constructed, meaning that while gender is assigned at birth based on visible genitalia, it isn’t a natural, immutable category but one that is socially determined; 3) analyzing power in modern western societies reveals the dominance of men and promotion of a limited version of heterosexual masculinity; 4) emerging methods in sociology are helping disrupt the production of ostensibly universal knowledge from a narrow perspective of privileged subjects. Lorber concludes that feminist sociologists’ work on gender has provided the tools for sociology to reconsider how it analyzes structures of power and produces knowledge.

bell hooks, “Sisterhood: Political Solidarity between Women.” Feminist Review , 1986

bell hooks argues that the feminist movement has privileged the voices, experiences, and concerns of white women at the expense of women of color. Instead of acknowledging who the movement has centered, white women have continually invoked the “common oppression” of all women, a move they think demonstrates solidarity but actually erases and marginalizes women who fall outside of the categories of white, straight, educated, and middle-class. Instead of appealing to “common oppression,” meaningful solidarity requires that women acknowledge their differences, committing to a feminism that “aims to end sexist oppression.” For hooks, this necessitates a feminism that is anti-racist. Solidarity doesn’t have to mean sameness; collective action can emerge from difference.

Jennifer C. Nash, “re-thinking intersectionality.” Feminist Review , 2008

Chances are you’ve come across the phrase “intersectional feminism.” For many, this term is redundant: If feminism isn’t attentive to issues impacting a range of women, then it’s not actually feminism. While the term “intersectional” now circulates colloquially to signify a feminism that is inclusive, its usage has become divorced from its academic origins. The legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw created the term “intersectionality” in the 1980s based on Black women’s experiences with the law in cases of discrimination and violence. Intersectionality is not an adjective or a way to describe identity, but a tool for analyzing structures of power. It aims to disrupt universal categories of and claims about identity. Jennifer Nash provides an overview of intersectionality’s power, including guidance on how to deploy it in the service of coalition-building and collective action.

Treva B. Lindsey, “Post-Ferguson: A ‘Herstorical’ Approach to Black Violability.” Feminist Studies , 2015

Treva Lindsey considers the erasure of Black women’s labor in anti-racist activism , as well as the erasure of their experiences with violence and harm. From the Civil Rights Movement to #BlackLivesMatter, Black women’s contributions and leadership have not been acknowledged to the same extent as their male counterparts. Furthermore, their experiences with state-sanctioned racial violence don’t garner as much attention. Lindsey argues that we must make visible the experiences and labor of Black women and queer persons of color in activist settings in order to strengthen activist struggles for racial justice.

Renya Ramirez, “Race, Tribal Nation, and Gender: A Native Feminist Approach to Belonging.” Meridians , 2007

Renya Ramirez (Winnebago) argues that indigenous activist struggles for sovereignty, liberation, and survival must account for gender. A range of issues impact Native American women, such as domestic abuse, forced sterilization , and sexual violence. Furthermore, the settler state has been invested in disciplining indigenous concepts and practices of gender, sexuality, and kinship, reorienting them to fit into white settler understandings of property and inheritance. A Native American feminist consciousness centers gender and envisions decolonization without sexism.

Hester Eisenstein, “A Dangerous Liaison? Feminism and Corporate Globalization.” Science & Society , 2005

Hester Eisenstein argues that some of contemporary U.S. feminism’s work in a global context has been informed by and strengthened capitalism in a way that ultimately increases harms against marginalized women. For example, some have suggested offering poor rural women in non-U.S. contexts microcredit as a path to economic liberation. In reality, these debt transactions hinder economic development and “continue the policies that have created the poverty in the first place.” Eisenstein acknowledges that feminism has the power to challenge capitalist interests in a global context, but she cautions us to consider how aspects of the feminist movement have been coopted by corporations.

Afsaneh Najmabadi, “Transing and Transpassing Across Sex-Gender Walls in Iran.” Women’s Studies Quarterly , 2008

Afsaneh Najmabadi remarks on the existence of sex-reassignment surgeries in Iran since the 1970s and the increase in these surgeries in the twenty-first century. She explains that these surgeries are a response to perceived sexual deviance; they’re offered to cure persons who express same-sex desire. Sex-reassignment surgeries ostensibly “heteronormaliz[e]” people who are pressured to pursue this medical intervention for legal and religious reasons. While a repressive practice, Najmabadi also argues that this practice has paradoxically provided “ relatively safer semipublic gay and lesbian social space” in Iran. Najmabadi’s scholarship illustrates how gender and sexual categories, practices, and understandings are influenced by geographical and cultural contexts.

Susan Stryker, Paisley Currah, and Lisa Jean Moore’s “Introduction: Trans-, Trans, or Transgender?” Women’s Studies Quarterly , 2008

Susan Stryker, Paisley Currah, and Lisa Jean Moore map the ways that transgender studies can expand feminist and gender studies. “Transgender” does not need to exclusively signify individuals and communities, but can provide a lens for interrogating all bodies’ relationships to gendered spaces, disrupting the bounds of seemingly strict identity categories, and redefining gender. The “trans-” in transgender is a conceptual tool for interrogating the relationship between bodies and the institutions that discipline them.

David A. Rubin, “‘An Unnamed Blank That Craved a Name’: A Genealogy of Intersex as Gender.” Signs , 2012

David Rubin considers the fact that intersex persons have been subject to medicalization, pathologization, and “regulation of embodied difference through biopolitical discourses, practices, and technologies” that rely on normative cultural understandings of gender and sexuality. Rubin considers the impact intersexuality had on conceptualizations of gender in mid-twentieth century sexology studies, and how the very concept of gender that emerged in that moment has been used to regulate the lives of intersex individuals.

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, “Feminist Disability Studies.” Signs , 2005

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson provides a thorough overview of the field of feminist disability studies. Both feminist and disability studies contend that those things which seem most natural to bodies are actually produced by a range of political, legal, medical, and social institutions. Gendered and disabled bodies are marked by these institutions. Feminist disability studies asks: How are meaning and value assigned to disabled bodies? How is this meaning and value determined by other social markers, such as gender, sexuality, race, class, religion, national origin, and citizenship status?

The field asks under what conditions disabled bodies are denied or granted sexual, reproductive, and bodily autonomy and how disability impacts the exploration of gender and sexual expression in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood historical and contemporary pathologization of genders and sexualities. It explores how disabled activists, artists, and writers respond to social, cultural, medical, and political forces that deny them access, equity, and representation

Karin A. Martin, “William Wants a Doll. Can He Have One? Feminists, Child Care Advisors, and Gender-Neutral Child Rearing.” Gender and Society , 2005

Karin Martin examines the gender socialization of children through an analysis of a range of parenting materials. Materials that claim to be (or have been claimed as) gender-neutral actually have a deep investment in training children in gender and sexual norms. Martin invites us to think about how adult reactions to children’s gender nonconformity pivots on a fear that gender expression in childhood is indicative of present or future non-normative sexuality. In other words, U.S. culture is unable to separate gender from sexuality. We imagine gender identity and expression maps predictably onto sexual desire. When children’s gender identity and expression exceeds culturally-determined permissible bounds in a family or community, adults project onto the child and discipline accordingly.

Sarah Pemberton, “Enforcing Gender: The Constitution of Sex and Gender in Prison Regimes.” Signs , 2013

Sarah Pemberton’s considers how sex-segregated prisons in the U.S. and England discipline their populations differently according to gender and sexual norms. This contributes to the policing, punishment, and vulnerability of incarcerated gender-nonconforming, transgender, and intersex persons. Issues ranging from healthcare access to increased rates of violence and harassment suggest that policies impacting incarcerated persons should center gender.

Dean Spade, “Some Very Basic Tips for Making High Education More Accessible to Trans Students and Rethinking How We Talk about Gendered Bodies.” The Radical Teacher , 2011

Lawyer and trans activist Dean Spade offers a pedagogical perspective on how to make classrooms accessible and inclusive for students. Spade also offers guidance on how to have classroom conversations about gender and bodies that don’t reassert a biological understanding of gender or equate certain body parts and functions with particular genders. While the discourse around these issues is constantly shifting, Spade provides useful ways to think about small changes in language that can have a powerful impact on students.

Sarah S. Richardson, “Feminist Philosophy of Science: History, Contributions, and Challenges.” Synthese , 2010

Feminist philosophy of science is a field comprised of scholars studying gender and science that has its origins in the work of feminist scientists in the 1960s. Richardson considers the contributions made by these scholars, such as increased opportunities for and representation of women in STEM fields , pointing out biases in seemingly neutral fields of scientific inquiry. Richardson also considers the role of gender in knowledge production, looking at the difficulties women have faced in institutional and professional contexts. The field of feminist philosophy of science and its practitioners are marginalized and delegitimized because of the ways they challenge dominant modes of knowledge production and disciplinary inquiry.

Bryce Traister’s “Academic Viagra: The Rise of American Masculinity Studies.” American Quarterly , 2000

Bryce Traister considers the emergence of masculinity studies out of gender studies and its development in American cultural studies. He argues that the field has remained largely invested in centering heterosexuality, asserting the centrality and dominance of men in critical thought. He offers ways for thinking about how to study masculinity without reinstituting gendered hierarchies or erasing the contributions of feminist and queer scholarship.

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Feminist Perspectives on Sex and Gender

Feminism is said to be the movement to end women’s oppression (hooks 2000, 26). One possible way to understand ‘woman’ in this claim is to take it as a sex term: ‘woman’ picks out human females and being a human female depends on various biological and anatomical features (like genitalia). Historically many feminists have understood ‘woman’ differently: not as a sex term, but as a gender term that depends on social and cultural factors (like social position). In so doing, they distinguished sex (being female or male) from gender (being a woman or a man), although most ordinary language users appear to treat the two interchangeably. In feminist philosophy, this distinction has generated a lively debate. Central questions include: What does it mean for gender to be distinct from sex, if anything at all? How should we understand the claim that gender depends on social and/or cultural factors? What does it mean to be gendered woman, man, or genderqueer? This entry outlines and discusses distinctly feminist debates on sex and gender considering both historical and more contemporary positions.

1.1 Biological determinism

1.2 gender terminology, 2.1 gender socialisation, 2.2 gender as feminine and masculine personality, 2.3 gender as feminine and masculine sexuality, 3.1.1 particularity argument, 3.1.2 normativity argument, 3.2 is sex classification solely a matter of biology, 3.3 are sex and gender distinct, 3.4 is the sex/gender distinction useful, 4.1.1 gendered social series, 4.1.2 resemblance nominalism, 4.2.1 social subordination and gender, 4.2.2 gender uniessentialism, 4.2.3 gender as positionality, 5. beyond the binary, 6. conclusion, other internet resources, related entries, 1. the sex/gender distinction..

The terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ mean different things to different feminist theorists and neither are easy or straightforward to characterise. Sketching out some feminist history of the terms provides a helpful starting point.

Most people ordinarily seem to think that sex and gender are coextensive: women are human females, men are human males. Many feminists have historically disagreed and have endorsed the sex/ gender distinction. Provisionally: ‘sex’ denotes human females and males depending on biological features (chromosomes, sex organs, hormones and other physical features); ‘gender’ denotes women and men depending on social factors (social role, position, behaviour or identity). The main feminist motivation for making this distinction was to counter biological determinism or the view that biology is destiny.

A typical example of a biological determinist view is that of Geddes and Thompson who, in 1889, argued that social, psychological and behavioural traits were caused by metabolic state. Women supposedly conserve energy (being ‘anabolic’) and this makes them passive, conservative, sluggish, stable and uninterested in politics. Men expend their surplus energy (being ‘katabolic’) and this makes them eager, energetic, passionate, variable and, thereby, interested in political and social matters. These biological ‘facts’ about metabolic states were used not only to explain behavioural differences between women and men but also to justify what our social and political arrangements ought to be. More specifically, they were used to argue for withholding from women political rights accorded to men because (according to Geddes and Thompson) “what was decided among the prehistoric Protozoa cannot be annulled by Act of Parliament” (quoted from Moi 1999, 18). It would be inappropriate to grant women political rights, as they are simply not suited to have those rights; it would also be futile since women (due to their biology) would simply not be interested in exercising their political rights. To counter this kind of biological determinism, feminists have argued that behavioural and psychological differences have social, rather than biological, causes. For instance, Simone de Beauvoir famously claimed that one is not born, but rather becomes a woman, and that “social discrimination produces in women moral and intellectual effects so profound that they appear to be caused by nature” (Beauvoir 1972 [original 1949], 18; for more, see the entry on Simone de Beauvoir ). Commonly observed behavioural traits associated with women and men, then, are not caused by anatomy or chromosomes. Rather, they are culturally learned or acquired.

Although biological determinism of the kind endorsed by Geddes and Thompson is nowadays uncommon, the idea that behavioural and psychological differences between women and men have biological causes has not disappeared. In the 1970s, sex differences were used to argue that women should not become airline pilots since they will be hormonally unstable once a month and, therefore, unable to perform their duties as well as men (Rogers 1999, 11). More recently, differences in male and female brains have been said to explain behavioural differences; in particular, the anatomy of corpus callosum, a bundle of nerves that connects the right and left cerebral hemispheres, is thought to be responsible for various psychological and behavioural differences. For instance, in 1992, a Time magazine article surveyed then prominent biological explanations of differences between women and men claiming that women’s thicker corpus callosums could explain what ‘women’s intuition’ is based on and impair women’s ability to perform some specialised visual-spatial skills, like reading maps (Gorman 1992). Anne Fausto-Sterling has questioned the idea that differences in corpus callosums cause behavioural and psychological differences. First, the corpus callosum is a highly variable piece of anatomy; as a result, generalisations about its size, shape and thickness that hold for women and men in general should be viewed with caution. Second, differences in adult human corpus callosums are not found in infants; this may suggest that physical brain differences actually develop as responses to differential treatment. Third, given that visual-spatial skills (like map reading) can be improved by practice, even if women and men’s corpus callosums differ, this does not make the resulting behavioural differences immutable. (Fausto-Sterling 2000b, chapter 5).

In order to distinguish biological differences from social/psychological ones and to talk about the latter, feminists appropriated the term ‘gender’. Psychologists writing on transsexuality were the first to employ gender terminology in this sense. Until the 1960s, ‘gender’ was often used to refer to masculine and feminine words, like le and la in French. However, in order to explain why some people felt that they were ‘trapped in the wrong bodies’, the psychologist Robert Stoller (1968) began using the terms ‘sex’ to pick out biological traits and ‘gender’ to pick out the amount of femininity and masculinity a person exhibited. Although (by and large) a person’s sex and gender complemented each other, separating out these terms seemed to make theoretical sense allowing Stoller to explain the phenomenon of transsexuality: transsexuals’ sex and gender simply don’t match.

Along with psychologists like Stoller, feminists found it useful to distinguish sex and gender. This enabled them to argue that many differences between women and men were socially produced and, therefore, changeable. Gayle Rubin (for instance) uses the phrase ‘sex/gender system’ in order to describe “a set of arrangements by which the biological raw material of human sex and procreation is shaped by human, social intervention” (1975, 165). Rubin employed this system to articulate that “part of social life which is the locus of the oppression of women” (1975, 159) describing gender as the “socially imposed division of the sexes” (1975, 179). Rubin’s thought was that although biological differences are fixed, gender differences are the oppressive results of social interventions that dictate how women and men should behave. Women are oppressed as women and “by having to be women” (Rubin 1975, 204). However, since gender is social, it is thought to be mutable and alterable by political and social reform that would ultimately bring an end to women’s subordination. Feminism should aim to create a “genderless (though not sexless) society, in which one’s sexual anatomy is irrelevant to who one is, what one does, and with whom one makes love” (Rubin 1975, 204).

In some earlier interpretations, like Rubin’s, sex and gender were thought to complement one another. The slogan ‘Gender is the social interpretation of sex’ captures this view. Nicholson calls this ‘the coat-rack view’ of gender: our sexed bodies are like coat racks and “provide the site upon which gender [is] constructed” (1994, 81). Gender conceived of as masculinity and femininity is superimposed upon the ‘coat-rack’ of sex as each society imposes on sexed bodies their cultural conceptions of how males and females should behave. This socially constructs gender differences – or the amount of femininity/masculinity of a person – upon our sexed bodies. That is, according to this interpretation, all humans are either male or female; their sex is fixed. But cultures interpret sexed bodies differently and project different norms on those bodies thereby creating feminine and masculine persons. Distinguishing sex and gender, however, also enables the two to come apart: they are separable in that one can be sexed male and yet be gendered a woman, or vice versa (Haslanger 2000b; Stoljar 1995).

So, this group of feminist arguments against biological determinism suggested that gender differences result from cultural practices and social expectations. Nowadays it is more common to denote this by saying that gender is socially constructed. This means that genders (women and men) and gendered traits (like being nurturing or ambitious) are the “intended or unintended product[s] of a social practice” (Haslanger 1995, 97). But which social practices construct gender, what social construction is and what being of a certain gender amounts to are major feminist controversies. There is no consensus on these issues. (See the entry on intersections between analytic and continental feminism for more on different ways to understand gender.)

2. Gender as socially constructed

One way to interpret Beauvoir’s claim that one is not born but rather becomes a woman is to take it as a claim about gender socialisation: females become women through a process whereby they acquire feminine traits and learn feminine behaviour. Masculinity and femininity are thought to be products of nurture or how individuals are brought up. They are causally constructed (Haslanger 1995, 98): social forces either have a causal role in bringing gendered individuals into existence or (to some substantial sense) shape the way we are qua women and men. And the mechanism of construction is social learning. For instance, Kate Millett takes gender differences to have “essentially cultural, rather than biological bases” that result from differential treatment (1971, 28–9). For her, gender is “the sum total of the parents’, the peers’, and the culture’s notions of what is appropriate to each gender by way of temperament, character, interests, status, worth, gesture, and expression” (Millett 1971, 31). Feminine and masculine gender-norms, however, are problematic in that gendered behaviour conveniently fits with and reinforces women’s subordination so that women are socialised into subordinate social roles: they learn to be passive, ignorant, docile, emotional helpmeets for men (Millett 1971, 26). However, since these roles are simply learned, we can create more equal societies by ‘unlearning’ social roles. That is, feminists should aim to diminish the influence of socialisation.

Social learning theorists hold that a huge array of different influences socialise us as women and men. This being the case, it is extremely difficult to counter gender socialisation. For instance, parents often unconsciously treat their female and male children differently. When parents have been asked to describe their 24- hour old infants, they have done so using gender-stereotypic language: boys are describes as strong, alert and coordinated and girls as tiny, soft and delicate. Parents’ treatment of their infants further reflects these descriptions whether they are aware of this or not (Renzetti & Curran 1992, 32). Some socialisation is more overt: children are often dressed in gender stereotypical clothes and colours (boys are dressed in blue, girls in pink) and parents tend to buy their children gender stereotypical toys. They also (intentionally or not) tend to reinforce certain ‘appropriate’ behaviours. While the precise form of gender socialization has changed since the onset of second-wave feminism, even today girls are discouraged from playing sports like football or from playing ‘rough and tumble’ games and are more likely than boys to be given dolls or cooking toys to play with; boys are told not to ‘cry like a baby’ and are more likely to be given masculine toys like trucks and guns (for more, see Kimmel 2000, 122–126). [ 1 ]

According to social learning theorists, children are also influenced by what they observe in the world around them. This, again, makes countering gender socialisation difficult. For one, children’s books have portrayed males and females in blatantly stereotypical ways: for instance, males as adventurers and leaders, and females as helpers and followers. One way to address gender stereotyping in children’s books has been to portray females in independent roles and males as non-aggressive and nurturing (Renzetti & Curran 1992, 35). Some publishers have attempted an alternative approach by making their characters, for instance, gender-neutral animals or genderless imaginary creatures (like TV’s Teletubbies). However, parents reading books with gender-neutral or genderless characters often undermine the publishers’ efforts by reading them to their children in ways that depict the characters as either feminine or masculine. According to Renzetti and Curran, parents labelled the overwhelming majority of gender-neutral characters masculine whereas those characters that fit feminine gender stereotypes (for instance, by being helpful and caring) were labelled feminine (1992, 35). Socialising influences like these are still thought to send implicit messages regarding how females and males should act and are expected to act shaping us into feminine and masculine persons.

Nancy Chodorow (1978; 1995) has criticised social learning theory as too simplistic to explain gender differences (see also Deaux & Major 1990; Gatens 1996). Instead, she holds that gender is a matter of having feminine and masculine personalities that develop in early infancy as responses to prevalent parenting practices. In particular, gendered personalities develop because women tend to be the primary caretakers of small children. Chodorow holds that because mothers (or other prominent females) tend to care for infants, infant male and female psychic development differs. Crudely put: the mother-daughter relationship differs from the mother-son relationship because mothers are more likely to identify with their daughters than their sons. This unconsciously prompts the mother to encourage her son to psychologically individuate himself from her thereby prompting him to develop well defined and rigid ego boundaries. However, the mother unconsciously discourages the daughter from individuating herself thereby prompting the daughter to develop flexible and blurry ego boundaries. Childhood gender socialisation further builds on and reinforces these unconsciously developed ego boundaries finally producing feminine and masculine persons (1995, 202–206). This perspective has its roots in Freudian psychoanalytic theory, although Chodorow’s approach differs in many ways from Freud’s.

Gendered personalities are supposedly manifested in common gender stereotypical behaviour. Take emotional dependency. Women are stereotypically more emotional and emotionally dependent upon others around them, supposedly finding it difficult to distinguish their own interests and wellbeing from the interests and wellbeing of their children and partners. This is said to be because of their blurry and (somewhat) confused ego boundaries: women find it hard to distinguish their own needs from the needs of those around them because they cannot sufficiently individuate themselves from those close to them. By contrast, men are stereotypically emotionally detached, preferring a career where dispassionate and distanced thinking are virtues. These traits are said to result from men’s well-defined ego boundaries that enable them to prioritise their own needs and interests sometimes at the expense of others’ needs and interests.

Chodorow thinks that these gender differences should and can be changed. Feminine and masculine personalities play a crucial role in women’s oppression since they make females overly attentive to the needs of others and males emotionally deficient. In order to correct the situation, both male and female parents should be equally involved in parenting (Chodorow 1995, 214). This would help in ensuring that children develop sufficiently individuated senses of selves without becoming overly detached, which in turn helps to eradicate common gender stereotypical behaviours.

Catharine MacKinnon develops her theory of gender as a theory of sexuality. Very roughly: the social meaning of sex (gender) is created by sexual objectification of women whereby women are viewed and treated as objects for satisfying men’s desires (MacKinnon 1989). Masculinity is defined as sexual dominance, femininity as sexual submissiveness: genders are “created through the eroticization of dominance and submission. The man/woman difference and the dominance/submission dynamic define each other. This is the social meaning of sex” (MacKinnon 1989, 113). For MacKinnon, gender is constitutively constructed : in defining genders (or masculinity and femininity) we must make reference to social factors (see Haslanger 1995, 98). In particular, we must make reference to the position one occupies in the sexualised dominance/submission dynamic: men occupy the sexually dominant position, women the sexually submissive one. As a result, genders are by definition hierarchical and this hierarchy is fundamentally tied to sexualised power relations. The notion of ‘gender equality’, then, does not make sense to MacKinnon. If sexuality ceased to be a manifestation of dominance, hierarchical genders (that are defined in terms of sexuality) would cease to exist.

So, gender difference for MacKinnon is not a matter of having a particular psychological orientation or behavioural pattern; rather, it is a function of sexuality that is hierarchal in patriarchal societies. This is not to say that men are naturally disposed to sexually objectify women or that women are naturally submissive. Instead, male and female sexualities are socially conditioned: men have been conditioned to find women’s subordination sexy and women have been conditioned to find a particular male version of female sexuality as erotic – one in which it is erotic to be sexually submissive. For MacKinnon, both female and male sexual desires are defined from a male point of view that is conditioned by pornography (MacKinnon 1989, chapter 7). Bluntly put: pornography portrays a false picture of ‘what women want’ suggesting that women in actual fact are and want to be submissive. This conditions men’s sexuality so that they view women’s submission as sexy. And male dominance enforces this male version of sexuality onto women, sometimes by force. MacKinnon’s thought is not that male dominance is a result of social learning (see 2.1.); rather, socialization is an expression of power. That is, socialized differences in masculine and feminine traits, behaviour, and roles are not responsible for power inequalities. Females and males (roughly put) are socialised differently because there are underlying power inequalities. As MacKinnon puts it, ‘dominance’ (power relations) is prior to ‘difference’ (traits, behaviour and roles) (see, MacKinnon 1989, chapter 12). MacKinnon, then, sees legal restrictions on pornography as paramount to ending women’s subordinate status that stems from their gender.

3. Problems with the sex/gender distinction

3.1 is gender uniform.

The positions outlined above share an underlying metaphysical perspective on gender: gender realism . [ 2 ] That is, women as a group are assumed to share some characteristic feature, experience, common condition or criterion that defines their gender and the possession of which makes some individuals women (as opposed to, say, men). All women are thought to differ from all men in this respect (or respects). For example, MacKinnon thought that being treated in sexually objectifying ways is the common condition that defines women’s gender and what women as women share. All women differ from all men in this respect. Further, pointing out females who are not sexually objectified does not provide a counterexample to MacKinnon’s view. Being sexually objectified is constitutive of being a woman; a female who escapes sexual objectification, then, would not count as a woman.

One may want to critique the three accounts outlined by rejecting the particular details of each account. (For instance, see Spelman [1988, chapter 4] for a critique of the details of Chodorow’s view.) A more thoroughgoing critique has been levelled at the general metaphysical perspective of gender realism that underlies these positions. It has come under sustained attack on two grounds: first, that it fails to take into account racial, cultural and class differences between women (particularity argument); second, that it posits a normative ideal of womanhood (normativity argument).

Elizabeth Spelman (1988) has influentially argued against gender realism with her particularity argument. Roughly: gender realists mistakenly assume that gender is constructed independently of race, class, ethnicity and nationality. If gender were separable from, for example, race and class in this manner, all women would experience womanhood in the same way. And this is clearly false. For instance, Harris (1993) and Stone (2007) criticise MacKinnon’s view, that sexual objectification is the common condition that defines women’s gender, for failing to take into account differences in women’s backgrounds that shape their sexuality. The history of racist oppression illustrates that during slavery black women were ‘hypersexualised’ and thought to be always sexually available whereas white women were thought to be pure and sexually virtuous. In fact, the rape of a black woman was thought to be impossible (Harris 1993). So, (the argument goes) sexual objectification cannot serve as the common condition for womanhood since it varies considerably depending on one’s race and class. [ 3 ]

For Spelman, the perspective of ‘white solipsism’ underlies gender realists’ mistake. They assumed that all women share some “golden nugget of womanness” (Spelman 1988, 159) and that the features constitutive of such a nugget are the same for all women regardless of their particular cultural backgrounds. Next, white Western middle-class feminists accounted for the shared features simply by reflecting on the cultural features that condition their gender as women thus supposing that “the womanness underneath the Black woman’s skin is a white woman’s, and deep down inside the Latina woman is an Anglo woman waiting to burst through an obscuring cultural shroud” (Spelman 1988, 13). In so doing, Spelman claims, white middle-class Western feminists passed off their particular view of gender as “a metaphysical truth” (1988, 180) thereby privileging some women while marginalising others. In failing to see the importance of race and class in gender construction, white middle-class Western feminists conflated “the condition of one group of women with the condition of all” (Spelman 1988, 3).

Betty Friedan’s (1963) well-known work is a case in point of white solipsism. [ 4 ] Friedan saw domesticity as the main vehicle of gender oppression and called upon women in general to find jobs outside the home. But she failed to realize that women from less privileged backgrounds, often poor and non-white, already worked outside the home to support their families. Friedan’s suggestion, then, was applicable only to a particular sub-group of women (white middle-class Western housewives). But it was mistakenly taken to apply to all women’s lives — a mistake that was generated by Friedan’s failure to take women’s racial and class differences into account (hooks 2000, 1–3).

Spelman further holds that since social conditioning creates femininity and societies (and sub-groups) that condition it differ from one another, femininity must be differently conditioned in different societies. For her, “females become not simply women but particular kinds of women” (Spelman 1988, 113): white working-class women, black middle-class women, poor Jewish women, wealthy aristocratic European women, and so on.

This line of thought has been extremely influential in feminist philosophy. For instance, Young holds that Spelman has definitively shown that gender realism is untenable (1997, 13). Mikkola (2006) argues that this isn’t so. The arguments Spelman makes do not undermine the idea that there is some characteristic feature, experience, common condition or criterion that defines women’s gender; they simply point out that some particular ways of cashing out what defines womanhood are misguided. So, although Spelman is right to reject those accounts that falsely take the feature that conditions white middle-class Western feminists’ gender to condition women’s gender in general, this leaves open the possibility that women qua women do share something that defines their gender. (See also Haslanger [2000a] for a discussion of why gender realism is not necessarily untenable, and Stoljar [2011] for a discussion of Mikkola’s critique of Spelman.)

Judith Butler critiques the sex/gender distinction on two grounds. They critique gender realism with their normativity argument (1999 [original 1990], chapter 1); they also hold that the sex/gender distinction is unintelligible (this will be discussed in section 3.3.). Butler’s normativity argument is not straightforwardly directed at the metaphysical perspective of gender realism, but rather at its political counterpart: identity politics. This is a form of political mobilization based on membership in some group (e.g. racial, ethnic, cultural, gender) and group membership is thought to be delimited by some common experiences, conditions or features that define the group (Heyes 2000, 58; see also the entry on Identity Politics ). Feminist identity politics, then, presupposes gender realism in that feminist politics is said to be mobilized around women as a group (or category) where membership in this group is fixed by some condition, experience or feature that women supposedly share and that defines their gender.

Butler’s normativity argument makes two claims. The first is akin to Spelman’s particularity argument: unitary gender notions fail to take differences amongst women into account thus failing to recognise “the multiplicity of cultural, social, and political intersections in which the concrete array of ‘women’ are constructed” (Butler 1999, 19–20). In their attempt to undercut biologically deterministic ways of defining what it means to be a woman, feminists inadvertently created new socially constructed accounts of supposedly shared femininity. Butler’s second claim is that such false gender realist accounts are normative. That is, in their attempt to fix feminism’s subject matter, feminists unwittingly defined the term ‘woman’ in a way that implies there is some correct way to be gendered a woman (Butler 1999, 5). That the definition of the term ‘woman’ is fixed supposedly “operates as a policing force which generates and legitimizes certain practices, experiences, etc., and curtails and delegitimizes others” (Nicholson 1998, 293). Following this line of thought, one could say that, for instance, Chodorow’s view of gender suggests that ‘real’ women have feminine personalities and that these are the women feminism should be concerned about. If one does not exhibit a distinctly feminine personality, the implication is that one is not ‘really’ a member of women’s category nor does one properly qualify for feminist political representation.

Butler’s second claim is based on their view that“[i]dentity categories [like that of women] are never merely descriptive, but always normative, and as such, exclusionary” (Butler 1991, 160). That is, the mistake of those feminists Butler critiques was not that they provided the incorrect definition of ‘woman’. Rather, (the argument goes) their mistake was to attempt to define the term ‘woman’ at all. Butler’s view is that ‘woman’ can never be defined in a way that does not prescribe some “unspoken normative requirements” (like having a feminine personality) that women should conform to (Butler 1999, 9). Butler takes this to be a feature of terms like ‘woman’ that purport to pick out (what they call) ‘identity categories’. They seem to assume that ‘woman’ can never be used in a non-ideological way (Moi 1999, 43) and that it will always encode conditions that are not satisfied by everyone we think of as women. Some explanation for this comes from Butler’s view that all processes of drawing categorical distinctions involve evaluative and normative commitments; these in turn involve the exercise of power and reflect the conditions of those who are socially powerful (Witt 1995).

In order to better understand Butler’s critique, consider their account of gender performativity. For them, standard feminist accounts take gendered individuals to have some essential properties qua gendered individuals or a gender core by virtue of which one is either a man or a woman. This view assumes that women and men, qua women and men, are bearers of various essential and accidental attributes where the former secure gendered persons’ persistence through time as so gendered. But according to Butler this view is false: (i) there are no such essential properties, and (ii) gender is an illusion maintained by prevalent power structures. First, feminists are said to think that genders are socially constructed in that they have the following essential attributes (Butler 1999, 24): women are females with feminine behavioural traits, being heterosexuals whose desire is directed at men; men are males with masculine behavioural traits, being heterosexuals whose desire is directed at women. These are the attributes necessary for gendered individuals and those that enable women and men to persist through time as women and men. Individuals have “intelligible genders” (Butler 1999, 23) if they exhibit this sequence of traits in a coherent manner (where sexual desire follows from sexual orientation that in turn follows from feminine/ masculine behaviours thought to follow from biological sex). Social forces in general deem individuals who exhibit in coherent gender sequences (like lesbians) to be doing their gender ‘wrong’ and they actively discourage such sequencing of traits, for instance, via name-calling and overt homophobic discrimination. Think back to what was said above: having a certain conception of what women are like that mirrors the conditions of socially powerful (white, middle-class, heterosexual, Western) women functions to marginalize and police those who do not fit this conception.

These gender cores, supposedly encoding the above traits, however, are nothing more than illusions created by ideals and practices that seek to render gender uniform through heterosexism, the view that heterosexuality is natural and homosexuality is deviant (Butler 1999, 42). Gender cores are constructed as if they somehow naturally belong to women and men thereby creating gender dimorphism or the belief that one must be either a masculine male or a feminine female. But gender dimorphism only serves a heterosexist social order by implying that since women and men are sharply opposed, it is natural to sexually desire the opposite sex or gender.

Further, being feminine and desiring men (for instance) are standardly assumed to be expressions of one’s gender as a woman. Butler denies this and holds that gender is really performative. It is not “a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts follow; rather, gender is … instituted … through a stylized repetition of [habitual] acts ” (Butler 1999, 179): through wearing certain gender-coded clothing, walking and sitting in certain gender-coded ways, styling one’s hair in gender-coded manner and so on. Gender is not something one is, it is something one does; it is a sequence of acts, a doing rather than a being. And repeatedly engaging in ‘feminising’ and ‘masculinising’ acts congeals gender thereby making people falsely think of gender as something they naturally are . Gender only comes into being through these gendering acts: a female who has sex with men does not express her gender as a woman. This activity (amongst others) makes her gendered a woman.

The constitutive acts that gender individuals create genders as “compelling illusion[s]” (Butler 1990, 271). Our gendered classification scheme is a strong pragmatic construction : social factors wholly determine our use of the scheme and the scheme fails to represent accurately any ‘facts of the matter’ (Haslanger 1995, 100). People think that there are true and real genders, and those deemed to be doing their gender ‘wrong’ are not socially sanctioned. But, genders are true and real only to the extent that they are performed (Butler 1990, 278–9). It does not make sense, then, to say of a male-to-female trans person that s/he is really a man who only appears to be a woman. Instead, males dressing up and acting in ways that are associated with femininity “show that [as Butler suggests] ‘being’ feminine is just a matter of doing certain activities” (Stone 2007, 64). As a result, the trans person’s gender is just as real or true as anyone else’s who is a ‘traditionally’ feminine female or masculine male (Butler 1990, 278). [ 5 ] Without heterosexism that compels people to engage in certain gendering acts, there would not be any genders at all. And ultimately the aim should be to abolish norms that compel people to act in these gendering ways.

For Butler, given that gender is performative, the appropriate response to feminist identity politics involves two things. First, feminists should understand ‘woman’ as open-ended and “a term in process, a becoming, a constructing that cannot rightfully be said to originate or end … it is open to intervention and resignification” (Butler 1999, 43). That is, feminists should not try to define ‘woman’ at all. Second, the category of women “ought not to be the foundation of feminist politics” (Butler 1999, 9). Rather, feminists should focus on providing an account of how power functions and shapes our understandings of womanhood not only in the society at large but also within the feminist movement.

Many people, including many feminists, have ordinarily taken sex ascriptions to be solely a matter of biology with no social or cultural dimension. It is commonplace to think that there are only two sexes and that biological sex classifications are utterly unproblematic. By contrast, some feminists have argued that sex classifications are not unproblematic and that they are not solely a matter of biology. In order to make sense of this, it is helpful to distinguish object- and idea-construction (see Haslanger 2003b for more): social forces can be said to construct certain kinds of objects (e.g. sexed bodies or gendered individuals) and certain kinds of ideas (e.g. sex or gender concepts). First, take the object-construction of sexed bodies. Secondary sex characteristics, or the physiological and biological features commonly associated with males and females, are affected by social practices. In some societies, females’ lower social status has meant that they have been fed less and so, the lack of nutrition has had the effect of making them smaller in size (Jaggar 1983, 37). Uniformity in muscular shape, size and strength within sex categories is not caused entirely by biological factors, but depends heavily on exercise opportunities: if males and females were allowed the same exercise opportunities and equal encouragement to exercise, it is thought that bodily dimorphism would diminish (Fausto-Sterling 1993a, 218). A number of medical phenomena involving bones (like osteoporosis) have social causes directly related to expectations about gender, women’s diet and their exercise opportunities (Fausto-Sterling 2005). These examples suggest that physiological features thought to be sex-specific traits not affected by social and cultural factors are, after all, to some extent products of social conditioning. Social conditioning, then, shapes our biology.

Second, take the idea-construction of sex concepts. Our concept of sex is said to be a product of social forces in the sense that what counts as sex is shaped by social meanings. Standardly, those with XX-chromosomes, ovaries that produce large egg cells, female genitalia, a relatively high proportion of ‘female’ hormones, and other secondary sex characteristics (relatively small body size, less body hair) count as biologically female. Those with XY-chromosomes, testes that produce small sperm cells, male genitalia, a relatively high proportion of ‘male’ hormones and other secondary sex traits (relatively large body size, significant amounts of body hair) count as male. This understanding is fairly recent. The prevalent scientific view from Ancient Greeks until the late 18 th century, did not consider female and male sexes to be distinct categories with specific traits; instead, a ‘one-sex model’ held that males and females were members of the same sex category. Females’ genitals were thought to be the same as males’ but simply directed inside the body; ovaries and testes (for instance) were referred to by the same term and whether the term referred to the former or the latter was made clear by the context (Laqueur 1990, 4). It was not until the late 1700s that scientists began to think of female and male anatomies as radically different moving away from the ‘one-sex model’ of a single sex spectrum to the (nowadays prevalent) ‘two-sex model’ of sexual dimorphism. (For an alternative view, see King 2013.)

Fausto-Sterling has argued that this ‘two-sex model’ isn’t straightforward either (1993b; 2000a; 2000b). Based on a meta-study of empirical medical research, she estimates that 1.7% of population fail to neatly fall within the usual sex classifications possessing various combinations of different sex characteristics (Fausto-Sterling 2000a, 20). In her earlier work, she claimed that intersex individuals make up (at least) three further sex classes: ‘herms’ who possess one testis and one ovary; ‘merms’ who possess testes, some aspects of female genitalia but no ovaries; and ‘ferms’ who have ovaries, some aspects of male genitalia but no testes (Fausto-Sterling 1993b, 21). (In her [2000a], Fausto-Sterling notes that these labels were put forward tongue–in–cheek.) Recognition of intersex people suggests that feminists (and society at large) are wrong to think that humans are either female or male.

To illustrate further the idea-construction of sex, consider the case of the athlete Maria Patiño. Patiño has female genitalia, has always considered herself to be female and was considered so by others. However, she was discovered to have XY chromosomes and was barred from competing in women’s sports (Fausto-Sterling 2000b, 1–3). Patiño’s genitalia were at odds with her chromosomes and the latter were taken to determine her sex. Patiño successfully fought to be recognised as a female athlete arguing that her chromosomes alone were not sufficient to not make her female. Intersex people, like Patiño, illustrate that our understandings of sex differ and suggest that there is no immediately obvious way to settle what sex amounts to purely biologically or scientifically. Deciding what sex is involves evaluative judgements that are influenced by social factors.

Insofar as our cultural conceptions affect our understandings of sex, feminists must be much more careful about sex classifications and rethink what sex amounts to (Stone 2007, chapter 1). More specifically, intersex people illustrate that sex traits associated with females and males need not always go together and that individuals can have some mixture of these traits. This suggests to Stone that sex is a cluster concept: it is sufficient to satisfy enough of the sex features that tend to cluster together in order to count as being of a particular sex. But, one need not satisfy all of those features or some arbitrarily chosen supposedly necessary sex feature, like chromosomes (Stone 2007, 44). This makes sex a matter of degree and sex classifications should take place on a spectrum: one can be more or less female/male but there is no sharp distinction between the two. Further, intersex people (along with trans people) are located at the centre of the sex spectrum and in many cases their sex will be indeterminate (Stone 2007).

More recently, Ayala and Vasilyeva (2015) have argued for an inclusive and extended conception of sex: just as certain tools can be seen to extend our minds beyond the limits of our brains (e.g. white canes), other tools (like dildos) can extend our sex beyond our bodily boundaries. This view aims to motivate the idea that what counts as sex should not be determined by looking inwards at genitalia or other anatomical features. In a different vein, Ásta (2018) argues that sex is a conferred social property. This follows her more general conferralist framework to analyse all social properties: properties that are conferred by others thereby generating a social status that consists in contextually specific constraints and enablements on individual behaviour. The general schema for conferred properties is as follows (Ásta 2018, 8):

Conferred property: what property is conferred. Who: who the subjects are. What: what attitude, state, or action of the subjects matter. When: under what conditions the conferral takes place. Base property: what the subjects are attempting to track (consciously or not), if anything.

With being of a certain sex (e.g. male, female) in mind, Ásta holds that it is a conferred property that merely aims to track physical features. Hence sex is a social – or in fact, an institutional – property rather than a natural one. The schema for sex goes as follows (72):

Conferred property: being female, male. Who: legal authorities, drawing on the expert opinion of doctors, other medical personnel. What: “the recording of a sex in official documents ... The judgment of the doctors (and others) as to what sex role might be the most fitting, given the biological characteristics present.” When: at birth or after surgery/ hormonal treatment. Base property: “the aim is to track as many sex-stereotypical characteristics as possible, and doctors perform surgery in cases where that might help bring the physical characteristics more in line with the stereotype of male and female.”

This (among other things) offers a debunking analysis of sex: it may appear to be a natural property, but on the conferralist analysis is better understood as a conferred legal status. Ásta holds that gender too is a conferred property, but contra the discussion in the following section, she does not think that this collapses the distinction between sex and gender: sex and gender are differently conferred albeit both satisfying the general schema noted above. Nonetheless, on the conferralist framework what underlies both sex and gender is the idea of social construction as social significance: sex-stereotypical characteristics are taken to be socially significant context specifically, whereby they become the basis for conferring sex onto individuals and this brings with it various constraints and enablements on individuals and their behaviour. This fits object- and idea-constructions introduced above, although offers a different general framework to analyse the matter at hand.

In addition to arguing against identity politics and for gender performativity, Butler holds that distinguishing biological sex from social gender is unintelligible. For them, both are socially constructed:

If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called ‘sex’ is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all. (Butler 1999, 10–11)

(Butler is not alone in claiming that there are no tenable distinctions between nature/culture, biology/construction and sex/gender. See also: Antony 1998; Gatens 1996; Grosz 1994; Prokhovnik 1999.) Butler makes two different claims in the passage cited: that sex is a social construction, and that sex is gender. To unpack their view, consider the two claims in turn. First, the idea that sex is a social construct, for Butler, boils down to the view that our sexed bodies are also performative and, so, they have “no ontological status apart from the various acts which constitute [their] reality” (1999, 173). Prima facie , this implausibly implies that female and male bodies do not have independent existence and that if gendering activities ceased, so would physical bodies. This is not Butler’s claim; rather, their position is that bodies viewed as the material foundations on which gender is constructed, are themselves constructed as if they provide such material foundations (Butler 1993). Cultural conceptions about gender figure in “the very apparatus of production whereby sexes themselves are established” (Butler 1999, 11).

For Butler, sexed bodies never exist outside social meanings and how we understand gender shapes how we understand sex (1999, 139). Sexed bodies are not empty matter on which gender is constructed and sex categories are not picked out on the basis of objective features of the world. Instead, our sexed bodies are themselves discursively constructed : they are the way they are, at least to a substantial extent, because of what is attributed to sexed bodies and how they are classified (for discursive construction, see Haslanger 1995, 99). Sex assignment (calling someone female or male) is normative (Butler 1993, 1). [ 6 ] When the doctor calls a newly born infant a girl or a boy, s/he is not making a descriptive claim, but a normative one. In fact, the doctor is performing an illocutionary speech act (see the entry on Speech Acts ). In effect, the doctor’s utterance makes infants into girls or boys. We, then, engage in activities that make it seem as if sexes naturally come in two and that being female or male is an objective feature of the world, rather than being a consequence of certain constitutive acts (that is, rather than being performative). And this is what Butler means in saying that physical bodies never exist outside cultural and social meanings, and that sex is as socially constructed as gender. They do not deny that physical bodies exist. But, they take our understanding of this existence to be a product of social conditioning: social conditioning makes the existence of physical bodies intelligible to us by discursively constructing sexed bodies through certain constitutive acts. (For a helpful introduction to Butler’s views, see Salih 2002.)

For Butler, sex assignment is always in some sense oppressive. Again, this appears to be because of Butler’s general suspicion of classification: sex classification can never be merely descriptive but always has a normative element reflecting evaluative claims of those who are powerful. Conducting a feminist genealogy of the body (or examining why sexed bodies are thought to come naturally as female and male), then, should ground feminist practice (Butler 1993, 28–9). Feminists should examine and uncover ways in which social construction and certain acts that constitute sex shape our understandings of sexed bodies, what kinds of meanings bodies acquire and which practices and illocutionary speech acts ‘make’ our bodies into sexes. Doing so enables feminists to identity how sexed bodies are socially constructed in order to resist such construction.

However, given what was said above, it is far from obvious what we should make of Butler’s claim that sex “was always already gender” (1999, 11). Stone (2007) takes this to mean that sex is gender but goes on to question it arguing that the social construction of both sex and gender does not make sex identical to gender. According to Stone, it would be more accurate for Butler to say that claims about sex imply gender norms. That is, many claims about sex traits (like ‘females are physically weaker than males’) actually carry implications about how women and men are expected to behave. To some extent the claim describes certain facts. But, it also implies that females are not expected to do much heavy lifting and that they would probably not be good at it. So, claims about sex are not identical to claims about gender; rather, they imply claims about gender norms (Stone 2007, 70).

Some feminists hold that the sex/gender distinction is not useful. For a start, it is thought to reflect politically problematic dualistic thinking that undercuts feminist aims: the distinction is taken to reflect and replicate androcentric oppositions between (for instance) mind/body, culture/nature and reason/emotion that have been used to justify women’s oppression (e.g. Grosz 1994; Prokhovnik 1999). The thought is that in oppositions like these, one term is always superior to the other and that the devalued term is usually associated with women (Lloyd 1993). For instance, human subjectivity and agency are identified with the mind but since women are usually identified with their bodies, they are devalued as human subjects and agents. The opposition between mind and body is said to further map on to other distinctions, like reason/emotion, culture/nature, rational/irrational, where one side of each distinction is devalued (one’s bodily features are usually valued less that one’s mind, rationality is usually valued more than irrationality) and women are associated with the devalued terms: they are thought to be closer to bodily features and nature than men, to be irrational, emotional and so on. This is said to be evident (for instance) in job interviews. Men are treated as gender-neutral persons and not asked whether they are planning to take time off to have a family. By contrast, that women face such queries illustrates that they are associated more closely than men with bodily features to do with procreation (Prokhovnik 1999, 126). The opposition between mind and body, then, is thought to map onto the opposition between men and women.

Now, the mind/body dualism is also said to map onto the sex/gender distinction (Grosz 1994; Prokhovnik 1999). The idea is that gender maps onto mind, sex onto body. Although not used by those endorsing this view, the basic idea can be summed by the slogan ‘Gender is between the ears, sex is between the legs’: the implication is that, while sex is immutable, gender is something individuals have control over – it is something we can alter and change through individual choices. However, since women are said to be more closely associated with biological features (and so, to map onto the body side of the mind/body distinction) and men are treated as gender-neutral persons (mapping onto the mind side), the implication is that “man equals gender, which is associated with mind and choice, freedom from body, autonomy, and with the public real; while woman equals sex, associated with the body, reproduction, ‘natural’ rhythms and the private realm” (Prokhovnik 1999, 103). This is said to render the sex/gender distinction inherently repressive and to drain it of any potential for emancipation: rather than facilitating gender role choice for women, it “actually functions to reinforce their association with body, sex, and involuntary ‘natural’ rhythms” (Prokhovnik 1999, 103). Contrary to what feminists like Rubin argued, the sex/gender distinction cannot be used as a theoretical tool that dissociates conceptions of womanhood from biological and reproductive features.

Moi has further argued that the sex/gender distinction is useless given certain theoretical goals (1999, chapter 1). This is not to say that it is utterly worthless; according to Moi, the sex/gender distinction worked well to show that the historically prevalent biological determinism was false. However, for her, the distinction does no useful work “when it comes to producing a good theory of subjectivity” (1999, 6) and “a concrete, historical understanding of what it means to be a woman (or a man) in a given society” (1999, 4–5). That is, the 1960s distinction understood sex as fixed by biology without any cultural or historical dimensions. This understanding, however, ignores lived experiences and embodiment as aspects of womanhood (and manhood) by separating sex from gender and insisting that womanhood is to do with the latter. Rather, embodiment must be included in one’s theory that tries to figure out what it is to be a woman (or a man).

Mikkola (2011) argues that the sex/gender distinction, which underlies views like Rubin’s and MacKinnon’s, has certain unintuitive and undesirable ontological commitments that render the distinction politically unhelpful. First, claiming that gender is socially constructed implies that the existence of women and men is a mind-dependent matter. This suggests that we can do away with women and men simply by altering some social practices, conventions or conditions on which gender depends (whatever those are). However, ordinary social agents find this unintuitive given that (ordinarily) sex and gender are not distinguished. Second, claiming that gender is a product of oppressive social forces suggests that doing away with women and men should be feminism’s political goal. But this harbours ontologically undesirable commitments since many ordinary social agents view their gender to be a source of positive value. So, feminism seems to want to do away with something that should not be done away with, which is unlikely to motivate social agents to act in ways that aim at gender justice. Given these problems, Mikkola argues that feminists should give up the distinction on practical political grounds.

Tomas Bogardus (2020) has argued in an even more radical sense against the sex/gender distinction: as things stand, he holds, feminist philosophers have merely assumed and asserted that the distinction exists, instead of having offered good arguments for the distinction. In other words, feminist philosophers allegedly have yet to offer good reasons to think that ‘woman’ does not simply pick out adult human females. Alex Byrne (2020) argues in a similar vein: the term ‘woman’ does not pick out a social kind as feminist philosophers have “assumed”. Instead, “women are adult human females–nothing more, and nothing less” (2020, 3801). Byrne offers six considerations to ground this AHF (adult, human, female) conception.

• It reproduces the dictionary definition of ‘woman’.
• One would expect English to have a word that picks out the category adult human female, and ‘woman’ is the only candidate.
• AHF explains how we sometimes know that an individual is a woman, despite knowing nothing else relevant about her other than the fact that she is an adult human female.
• AHF stands or falls with the analogous thesis for girls, which can be supported independently.
• AHF predicts the correct verdict in cases of gender role reversal.
• AHF is supported by the fact that ‘woman’ and ‘female’ are often appropriately used as stylistic variants of each other, even in hyperintensional contexts.

Robin Dembroff (2021) responds to Byrne and highlights various problems with Byrne’s argument. First, framing: Byrne assumes from the start that gender terms like ‘woman’ have a single invariant meaning thereby failing to discuss the possibility of terms like ‘woman’ having multiple meanings – something that is a familiar claim made by feminist theorists from various disciplines. Moreover, Byrne (according to Dembroff) assumes without argument that there is a single, universal category of woman – again, something that has been extensively discussed and critiqued by feminist philosophers and theorists. Second, Byrne’s conception of the ‘dominant’ meaning of woman is said to be cherry-picked and it ignores a wealth of contexts outside of philosophy (like the media and the law) where ‘woman’ has a meaning other than AHF . Third, Byrne’s own distinction between biological and social categories fails to establish what he intended to establish: namely, that ‘woman’ picks out a biological rather than a social kind. Hence, Dembroff holds, Byrne’s case fails by its own lights. Byrne (2021) responds to Dembroff’s critique.

Others such as ‘gender critical feminists’ also hold views about the sex/gender distinction in a spirit similar to Bogardus and Byrne. For example, Holly Lawford-Smith (2021) takes the prevalent sex/gender distinction, where ‘female’/‘male’ are used as sex terms and ‘woman’/’man’ as gender terms, not to be helpful. Instead, she takes all of these to be sex terms and holds that (the norms of) femininity/masculinity refer to gender normativity. Because much of the gender critical feminists’ discussion that philosophers have engaged in has taken place in social media, public fora, and other sources outside academic philosophy, this entry will not focus on these discussions.

4. Women as a group

The various critiques of the sex/gender distinction have called into question the viability of the category women . Feminism is the movement to end the oppression women as a group face. But, how should the category of women be understood if feminists accept the above arguments that gender construction is not uniform, that a sharp distinction between biological sex and social gender is false or (at least) not useful, and that various features associated with women play a role in what it is to be a woman, none of which are individually necessary and jointly sufficient (like a variety of social roles, positions, behaviours, traits, bodily features and experiences)? Feminists must be able to address cultural and social differences in gender construction if feminism is to be a genuinely inclusive movement and be careful not to posit commonalities that mask important ways in which women qua women differ. These concerns (among others) have generated a situation where (as Linda Alcoff puts it) feminists aim to speak and make political demands in the name of women, at the same time rejecting the idea that there is a unified category of women (2006, 152). If feminist critiques of the category women are successful, then what (if anything) binds women together, what is it to be a woman, and what kinds of demands can feminists make on behalf of women?

Many have found the fragmentation of the category of women problematic for political reasons (e.g. Alcoff 2006; Bach 2012; Benhabib 1992; Frye 1996; Haslanger 2000b; Heyes 2000; Martin 1994; Mikkola 2007; Stoljar 1995; Stone 2004; Tanesini 1996; Young 1997; Zack 2005). For instance, Young holds that accounts like Spelman’s reduce the category of women to a gerrymandered collection of individuals with nothing to bind them together (1997, 20). Black women differ from white women but members of both groups also differ from one another with respect to nationality, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation and economic position; that is, wealthy white women differ from working-class white women due to their economic and class positions. These sub-groups are themselves diverse: for instance, some working-class white women in Northern Ireland are starkly divided along religious lines. So if we accept Spelman’s position, we risk ending up with individual women and nothing to bind them together. And this is problematic: in order to respond to oppression of women in general, feminists must understand them as a category in some sense. Young writes that without doing so “it is not possible to conceptualize oppression as a systematic, structured, institutional process” (1997, 17). Some, then, take the articulation of an inclusive category of women to be the prerequisite for effective feminist politics and a rich literature has emerged that aims to conceptualise women as a group or a collective (e.g. Alcoff 2006; Ásta 2011; Frye 1996; 2011; Haslanger 2000b; Heyes 2000; Stoljar 1995, 2011; Young 1997; Zack 2005). Articulations of this category can be divided into those that are: (a) gender nominalist — positions that deny there is something women qua women share and that seek to unify women’s social kind by appealing to something external to women; and (b) gender realist — positions that take there to be something women qua women share (although these realist positions differ significantly from those outlined in Section 2). Below we will review some influential gender nominalist and gender realist positions. Before doing so, it is worth noting that not everyone is convinced that attempts to articulate an inclusive category of women can succeed or that worries about what it is to be a woman are in need of being resolved. Mikkola (2016) argues that feminist politics need not rely on overcoming (what she calls) the ‘gender controversy’: that feminists must settle the meaning of gender concepts and articulate a way to ground women’s social kind membership. As she sees it, disputes about ‘what it is to be a woman’ have become theoretically bankrupt and intractable, which has generated an analytical impasse that looks unsurpassable. Instead, Mikkola argues for giving up the quest, which in any case in her view poses no serious political obstacles.

Elizabeth Barnes (2020) responds to the need to offer an inclusive conception of gender somewhat differently, although she endorses the need for feminism to be inclusive particularly of trans people. Barnes holds that typically philosophical theories of gender aim to offer an account of what it is to be a woman (or man, genderqueer, etc.), where such an account is presumed to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for being a woman or an account of our gender terms’ extensions. But, she holds, it is a mistake to expect our theories of gender to do so. For Barnes, a project that offers a metaphysics of gender “should be understood as the project of theorizing what it is —if anything— about the social world that ultimately explains gender” (2020, 706). This project is not equivalent to one that aims to define gender terms or elucidate the application conditions for natural language gender terms though.

4.1 Gender nominalism

Iris Young argues that unless there is “some sense in which ‘woman’ is the name of a social collective [that feminism represents], there is nothing specific to feminist politics” (1997, 13). In order to make the category women intelligible, she argues that women make up a series: a particular kind of social collective “whose members are unified passively by the objects their actions are oriented around and/or by the objectified results of the material effects of the actions of the other” (Young 1997, 23). A series is distinct from a group in that, whereas members of groups are thought to self-consciously share certain goals, projects, traits and/ or self-conceptions, members of series pursue their own individual ends without necessarily having anything at all in common. Young holds that women are not bound together by a shared feature or experience (or set of features and experiences) since she takes Spelman’s particularity argument to have established definitely that no such feature exists (1997, 13; see also: Frye 1996; Heyes 2000). Instead, women’s category is unified by certain practico-inert realities or the ways in which women’s lives and their actions are oriented around certain objects and everyday realities (Young 1997, 23–4). For example, bus commuters make up a series unified through their individual actions being organised around the same practico-inert objects of the bus and the practice of public transport. Women make up a series unified through women’s lives and actions being organised around certain practico-inert objects and realities that position them as women .

Young identifies two broad groups of such practico-inert objects and realities. First, phenomena associated with female bodies (physical facts), biological processes that take place in female bodies (menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth) and social rules associated with these biological processes (social rules of menstruation, for instance). Second, gender-coded objects and practices: pronouns, verbal and visual representations of gender, gender-coded artefacts and social spaces, clothes, cosmetics, tools and furniture. So, women make up a series since their lives and actions are organised around female bodies and certain gender-coded objects. Their series is bound together passively and the unity is “not one that arises from the individuals called women” (Young 1997, 32).

Although Young’s proposal purports to be a response to Spelman’s worries, Stone has questioned whether it is, after all, susceptible to the particularity argument: ultimately, on Young’s view, something women as women share (their practico-inert realities) binds them together (Stone 2004).

Natalie Stoljar holds that unless the category of women is unified, feminist action on behalf of women cannot be justified (1995, 282). Stoljar too is persuaded by the thought that women qua women do not share anything unitary. This prompts her to argue for resemblance nominalism. This is the view that a certain kind of resemblance relation holds between entities of a particular type (for more on resemblance nominalism, see Armstrong 1989, 39–58). Stoljar is not alone in arguing for resemblance relations to make sense of women as a category; others have also done so, usually appealing to Wittgenstein’s ‘family resemblance’ relations (Alcoff 1988; Green & Radford Curry 1991; Heyes 2000; Munro 2006). Stoljar relies more on Price’s resemblance nominalism whereby x is a member of some type F only if x resembles some paradigm or exemplar of F sufficiently closely (Price 1953, 20). For instance, the type of red entities is unified by some chosen red paradigms so that only those entities that sufficiently resemble the paradigms count as red. The type (or category) of women, then, is unified by some chosen woman paradigms so that those who sufficiently resemble the woman paradigms count as women (Stoljar 1995, 284).

Semantic considerations about the concept woman suggest to Stoljar that resemblance nominalism should be endorsed (Stoljar 2000, 28). It seems unlikely that the concept is applied on the basis of some single social feature all and only women possess. By contrast, woman is a cluster concept and our attributions of womanhood pick out “different arrangements of features in different individuals” (Stoljar 2000, 27). More specifically, they pick out the following clusters of features: (a) Female sex; (b) Phenomenological features: menstruation, female sexual experience, child-birth, breast-feeding, fear of walking on the streets at night or fear of rape; (c) Certain roles: wearing typically female clothing, being oppressed on the basis of one’s sex or undertaking care-work; (d) Gender attribution: “calling oneself a woman, being called a woman” (Stoljar 1995, 283–4). For Stoljar, attributions of womanhood are to do with a variety of traits and experiences: those that feminists have historically termed ‘gender traits’ (like social, behavioural, psychological traits) and those termed ‘sex traits’. Nonetheless, she holds that since the concept woman applies to (at least some) trans persons, one can be a woman without being female (Stoljar 1995, 282).

The cluster concept woman does not, however, straightforwardly provide the criterion for picking out the category of women. Rather, the four clusters of features that the concept picks out help single out woman paradigms that in turn help single out the category of women. First, any individual who possesses a feature from at least three of the four clusters mentioned will count as an exemplar of the category. For instance, an African-American with primary and secondary female sex characteristics, who describes herself as a woman and is oppressed on the basis of her sex, along with a white European hermaphrodite brought up ‘as a girl’, who engages in female roles and has female phenomenological features despite lacking female sex characteristics, will count as woman paradigms (Stoljar 1995, 284). [ 7 ] Second, any individual who resembles “any of the paradigms sufficiently closely (on Price’s account, as closely as [the paradigms] resemble each other) will be a member of the resemblance class ‘woman’” (Stoljar 1995, 284). That is, what delimits membership in the category of women is that one resembles sufficiently a woman paradigm.

4.2 Neo-gender realism

In a series of articles collected in her 2012 book, Sally Haslanger argues for a way to define the concept woman that is politically useful, serving as a tool in feminist fights against sexism, and that shows woman to be a social (not a biological) notion. More specifically, Haslanger argues that gender is a matter of occupying either a subordinate or a privileged social position. In some articles, Haslanger is arguing for a revisionary analysis of the concept woman (2000b; 2003a; 2003b). Elsewhere she suggests that her analysis may not be that revisionary after all (2005; 2006). Consider the former argument first. Haslanger’s analysis is, in her terms, ameliorative: it aims to elucidate which gender concepts best help feminists achieve their legitimate purposes thereby elucidating those concepts feminists should be using (Haslanger 2000b, 33). [ 8 ] Now, feminists need gender terminology in order to fight sexist injustices (Haslanger 2000b, 36). In particular, they need gender terms to identify, explain and talk about persistent social inequalities between males and females. Haslanger’s analysis of gender begins with the recognition that females and males differ in two respects: physically and in their social positions. Societies in general tend to “privilege individuals with male bodies” (Haslanger 2000b, 38) so that the social positions they subsequently occupy are better than the social positions of those with female bodies. And this generates persistent sexist injustices. With this in mind, Haslanger specifies how she understands genders:

S is a woman iff [by definition] S is systematically subordinated along some dimension (economic, political, legal, social, etc.), and S is ‘marked’ as a target for this treatment by observed or imagined bodily features presumed to be evidence of a female’s biological role in reproduction.

S is a man iff [by definition] S is systematically privileged along some dimension (economic, political, legal, social, etc.), and S is ‘marked’ as a target for this treatment by observed or imagined bodily features presumed to be evidence of a male’s biological role in reproduction. (2003a, 6–7)

These are constitutive of being a woman and a man: what makes calling S a woman apt, is that S is oppressed on sex-marked grounds; what makes calling S a man apt, is that S is privileged on sex-marked grounds.

Haslanger’s ameliorative analysis is counterintuitive in that females who are not sex-marked for oppression, do not count as women. At least arguably, the Queen of England is not oppressed on sex-marked grounds and so, would not count as a woman on Haslanger’s definition. And, similarly, all males who are not privileged would not count as men. This might suggest that Haslanger’s analysis should be rejected in that it does not capture what language users have in mind when applying gender terms. However, Haslanger argues that this is not a reason to reject the definitions, which she takes to be revisionary: they are not meant to capture our intuitive gender terms. In response, Mikkola (2009) has argued that revisionary analyses of gender concepts, like Haslanger’s, are both politically unhelpful and philosophically unnecessary.

Note also that Haslanger’s proposal is eliminativist: gender justice would eradicate gender, since it would abolish those sexist social structures responsible for sex-marked oppression and privilege. If sexist oppression were to cease, women and men would no longer exist (although there would still be males and females). Not all feminists endorse such an eliminativist view though. Stone holds that Haslanger does not leave any room for positively revaluing what it is to be a woman: since Haslanger defines woman in terms of subordination,

any woman who challenges her subordinate status must by definition be challenging her status as a woman, even if she does not intend to … positive change to our gender norms would involve getting rid of the (necessarily subordinate) feminine gender. (Stone 2007, 160)

But according to Stone this is not only undesirable – one should be able to challenge subordination without having to challenge one’s status as a woman. It is also false: “because norms of femininity can be and constantly are being revised, women can be women without thereby being subordinate” (Stone 2007, 162; Mikkola [2016] too argues that Haslanger’s eliminativism is troublesome).

Theodore Bach holds that Haslanger’s eliminativism is undesirable on other grounds, and that Haslanger’s position faces another more serious problem. Feminism faces the following worries (among others):

Representation problem : “if there is no real group of ‘women’, then it is incoherent to make moral claims and advance political policies on behalf of women” (Bach 2012, 234). Commonality problems : (1) There is no feature that all women cross-culturally and transhistorically share. (2) Delimiting women’s social kind with the help of some essential property privileges those who possess it, and marginalizes those who do not (Bach 2012, 235).

According to Bach, Haslanger’s strategy to resolve these problems appeals to ‘social objectivism’. First, we define women “according to a suitably abstract relational property” (Bach 2012, 236), which avoids the commonality problems. Second, Haslanger employs “an ontologically thin notion of ‘objectivity’” (Bach 2012, 236) that answers the representation problem. Haslanger’s solution (Bach holds) is specifically to argue that women make up an objective type because women are objectively similar to one another, and not simply classified together given our background conceptual schemes. Bach claims though that Haslanger’s account is not objective enough, and we should on political grounds “provide a stronger ontological characterization of the genders men and women according to which they are natural kinds with explanatory essences” (Bach 2012, 238). He thus proposes that women make up a natural kind with a historical essence:

The essential property of women, in virtue of which an individual is a member of the kind ‘women,’ is participation in a lineage of women. In order to exemplify this relational property, an individual must be a reproduction of ancestral women, in which case she must have undergone the ontogenetic processes through which a historical gender system replicates women. (Bach 2012, 271)

In short, one is not a woman due to shared surface properties with other women (like occupying a subordinate social position). Rather, one is a woman because one has the right history: one has undergone the ubiquitous ontogenetic process of gender socialization. Thinking about gender in this way supposedly provides a stronger kind unity than Haslanger’s that simply appeals to shared surface properties.

Not everyone agrees; Mikkola (2020) argues that Bach’s metaphysical picture has internal tensions that render it puzzling and that Bach’s metaphysics does not provide good responses to the commonality and presentation problems. The historically essentialist view also has anti-trans implications. After all, trans women who have not undergone female gender socialization won’t count as women on his view (Mikkola [2016, 2020] develops this line of critique in more detail). More worryingly, trans women will count as men contrary to their self-identification. Both Bettcher (2013) and Jenkins (2016) consider the importance of gender self-identification. Bettcher argues that there is more than one ‘correct’ way to understand womanhood: at the very least, the dominant (mainstream), and the resistant (trans) conceptions. Dominant views like that of Bach’s tend to erase trans people’s experiences and to marginalize trans women within feminist movements. Rather than trans women having to defend their self-identifying claims, these claims should be taken at face value right from the start. And so, Bettcher holds, “in analyzing the meaning of terms such as ‘woman,’ it is inappropriate to dismiss alternative ways in which those terms are actually used in trans subcultures; such usage needs to be taken into consideration as part of the analysis” (2013, 235).

Specifically with Haslanger in mind and in a similar vein, Jenkins (2016) discusses how Haslanger’s revisionary approach unduly excludes some trans women from women’s social kind. On Jenkins’s view, Haslanger’s ameliorative methodology in fact yields more than one satisfying target concept: one that “corresponds to Haslanger’s proposed concept and captures the sense of gender as an imposed social class”; another that “captures the sense of gender as a lived identity” (Jenkins 2016, 397). The latter of these allows us to include trans women into women’s social kind, who on Haslanger’s social class approach to gender would inappropriately have been excluded. (See Andler 2017 for the view that Jenkins’s purportedly inclusive conception of gender is still not fully inclusive. Jenkins 2018 responds to this charge and develops the notion of gender identity still further.)

In addition to her revisionary argument, Haslanger has suggested that her ameliorative analysis of woman may not be as revisionary as it first seems (2005, 2006). Although successful in their reference fixing, ordinary language users do not always know precisely what they are talking about. Our language use may be skewed by oppressive ideologies that can “mislead us about the content of our own thoughts” (Haslanger 2005, 12). Although her gender terminology is not intuitive, this could simply be because oppressive ideologies mislead us about the meanings of our gender terms. Our everyday gender terminology might mean something utterly different from what we think it means; and we could be entirely ignorant of this. Perhaps Haslanger’s analysis, then, has captured our everyday gender vocabulary revealing to us the terms that we actually employ: we may be applying ‘woman’ in our everyday language on the basis of sex-marked subordination whether we take ourselves to be doing so or not. If this is so, Haslanger’s gender terminology is not radically revisionist.

Saul (2006) argues that, despite it being possible that we unknowingly apply ‘woman’ on the basis of social subordination, it is extremely difficult to show that this is the case. This would require showing that the gender terminology we in fact employ is Haslanger’s proposed gender terminology. But discovering the grounds on which we apply everyday gender terms is extremely difficult precisely because they are applied in various and idiosyncratic ways (Saul 2006, 129). Haslanger, then, needs to do more in order to show that her analysis is non-revisionary.

Charlotte Witt (2011a; 2011b) argues for a particular sort of gender essentialism, which Witt terms ‘uniessentialism’. Her motivation and starting point is the following: many ordinary social agents report gender being essential to them and claim that they would be a different person were they of a different sex/gender. Uniessentialism attempts to understand and articulate this. However, Witt’s work departs in important respects from the earlier (so-called) essentialist or gender realist positions discussed in Section 2: Witt does not posit some essential property of womanhood of the kind discussed above, which failed to take women’s differences into account. Further, uniessentialism differs significantly from those position developed in response to the problem of how we should conceive of women’s social kind. It is not about solving the standard dispute between gender nominalists and gender realists, or about articulating some supposedly shared property that binds women together and provides a theoretical ground for feminist political solidarity. Rather, uniessentialism aims to make good the widely held belief that gender is constitutive of who we are. [ 9 ]

Uniessentialism is a sort of individual essentialism. Traditionally philosophers distinguish between kind and individual essentialisms: the former examines what binds members of a kind together and what do all members of some kind have in common qua members of that kind. The latter asks: what makes an individual the individual it is. We can further distinguish two sorts of individual essentialisms: Kripkean identity essentialism and Aristotelian uniessentialism. The former asks: what makes an individual that individual? The latter, however, asks a slightly different question: what explains the unity of individuals? What explains that an individual entity exists over and above the sum total of its constituent parts? (The standard feminist debate over gender nominalism and gender realism has largely been about kind essentialism. Being about individual essentialism, Witt’s uniessentialism departs in an important way from the standard debate.) From the two individual essentialisms, Witt endorses the Aristotelian one. On this view, certain functional essences have a unifying role: these essences are responsible for the fact that material parts constitute a new individual, rather than just a lump of stuff or a collection of particles. Witt’s example is of a house: the essential house-functional property (what the entity is for, what its purpose is) unifies the different material parts of a house so that there is a house, and not just a collection of house-constituting particles (2011a, 6). Gender (being a woman/a man) functions in a similar fashion and provides “the principle of normative unity” that organizes, unifies and determines the roles of social individuals (Witt 2011a, 73). Due to this, gender is a uniessential property of social individuals.

It is important to clarify the notions of gender and social individuality that Witt employs. First, gender is a social position that “cluster[s] around the engendering function … women conceive and bear … men beget” (Witt 2011a, 40). These are women and men’s socially mediated reproductive functions (Witt 2011a, 29) and they differ from the biological function of reproduction, which roughly corresponds to sex on the standard sex/gender distinction. Witt writes: “to be a woman is to be recognized to have a particular function in engendering, to be a man is to be recognized to have a different function in engendering” (2011a, 39). Second, Witt distinguishes persons (those who possess self-consciousness), human beings (those who are biologically human) and social individuals (those who occupy social positions synchronically and diachronically). These ontological categories are not equivalent in that they possess different persistence and identity conditions. Social individuals are bound by social normativity, human beings by biological normativity. These normativities differ in two respects: first, social norms differ from one culture to the next whereas biological norms do not; second, unlike biological normativity, social normativity requires “the recognition by others that an agent is both responsive to and evaluable under a social norm” (Witt 2011a, 19). Thus, being a social individual is not equivalent to being a human being. Further, Witt takes personhood to be defined in terms of intrinsic psychological states of self-awareness and self-consciousness. However, social individuality is defined in terms of the extrinsic feature of occupying a social position, which depends for its existence on a social world. So, the two are not equivalent: personhood is essentially about intrinsic features and could exist without a social world, whereas social individuality is essentially about extrinsic features that could not exist without a social world.

Witt’s gender essentialist argument crucially pertains to social individuals , not to persons or human beings: saying that persons or human beings are gendered would be a category mistake. But why is gender essential to social individuals? For Witt, social individuals are those who occupy positions in social reality. Further, “social positions have norms or social roles associated with them; a social role is what an individual who occupies a given social position is responsive to and evaluable under” (Witt 2011a, 59). However, qua social individuals, we occupy multiple social positions at once and over time: we can be women, mothers, immigrants, sisters, academics, wives, community organisers and team-sport coaches synchronically and diachronically. Now, the issue for Witt is what unifies these positions so that a social individual is constituted. After all, a bundle of social position occupancies does not make for an individual (just as a bundle of properties like being white , cube-shaped and sweet do not make for a sugar cube). For Witt, this unifying role is undertaken by gender (being a woman or a man): it is

a pervasive and fundamental social position that unifies and determines all other social positions both synchronically and diachronically. It unifies them not physically, but by providing a principle of normative unity. (2011a, 19–20)

By ‘normative unity’, Witt means the following: given our social roles and social position occupancies, we are responsive to various sets of social norms. These norms are “complex patterns of behaviour and practices that constitute what one ought to do in a situation given one’s social position(s) and one’s social context” (Witt 2011a, 82). The sets of norms can conflict: the norms of motherhood can (and do) conflict with the norms of being an academic philosopher. However, in order for this conflict to exist, the norms must be binding on a single social individual. Witt, then, asks: what explains the existence and unity of the social individual who is subject to conflicting social norms? The answer is gender.

Gender is not just a social role that unifies social individuals. Witt takes it to be the social role — as she puts it, it is the mega social role that unifies social agents. First, gender is a mega social role if it satisfies two conditions (and Witt claims that it does): (1) if it provides the principle of synchronic and diachronic unity of social individuals, and (2) if it inflects and defines a broad range of other social roles. Gender satisfies the first in usually being a life-long social position: a social individual persists just as long as their gendered social position persists. Further, Witt maintains, trans people are not counterexamples to this claim: transitioning entails that the old social individual has ceased to exist and a new one has come into being. And this is consistent with the same person persisting and undergoing social individual change via transitioning. Gender satisfies the second condition too. It inflects other social roles, like being a parent or a professional. The expectations attached to these social roles differ depending on the agent’s gender, since gender imposes different social norms to govern the execution of the further social roles. Now, gender — as opposed to some other social category, like race — is not just a mega social role; it is the unifying mega social role. Cross-cultural and trans-historical considerations support this view. Witt claims that patriarchy is a social universal (2011a, 98). By contrast, racial categorisation varies historically and cross-culturally, and racial oppression is not a universal feature of human cultures. Thus, gender has a better claim to being the social role that is uniessential to social individuals. This account of gender essentialism not only explains social agents’ connectedness to their gender, but it also provides a helpful way to conceive of women’s agency — something that is central to feminist politics.

Linda Alcoff holds that feminism faces an identity crisis: the category of women is feminism’s starting point, but various critiques about gender have fragmented the category and it is not clear how feminists should understand what it is to be a woman (2006, chapter 5). In response, Alcoff develops an account of gender as positionality whereby “gender is, among other things, a position one occupies and from which one can act politically” (2006, 148). In particular, she takes one’s social position to foster the development of specifically gendered identities (or self-conceptions): “The very subjectivity (or subjective experience of being a woman) and the very identity of women are constituted by women’s position” (Alcoff 2006, 148). Alcoff holds that there is an objective basis for distinguishing individuals on the grounds of (actual or expected) reproductive roles:

Women and men are differentiated by virtue of their different relationship of possibility to biological reproduction, with biological reproduction referring to conceiving, giving birth, and breast-feeding, involving one’s body . (Alcoff 2006, 172, italics in original)

The thought is that those standardly classified as biologically female, although they may not actually be able to reproduce, will encounter “a different set of practices, expectations, and feelings in regard to reproduction” than those standardly classified as male (Alcoff 2006, 172). Further, this differential relation to the possibility of reproduction is used as the basis for many cultural and social phenomena that position women and men: it can be

the basis of a variety of social segregations, it can engender the development of differential forms of embodiment experienced throughout life, and it can generate a wide variety of affective responses, from pride, delight, shame, guilt, regret, or great relief from having successfully avoided reproduction. (Alcoff 2006, 172)

Reproduction, then, is an objective basis for distinguishing individuals that takes on a cultural dimension in that it positions women and men differently: depending on the kind of body one has, one’s lived experience will differ. And this fosters the construction of gendered social identities: one’s role in reproduction helps configure how one is socially positioned and this conditions the development of specifically gendered social identities.

Since women are socially positioned in various different contexts, “there is no gender essence all women share” (Alcoff 2006, 147–8). Nonetheless, Alcoff acknowledges that her account is akin to the original 1960s sex/gender distinction insofar as sex difference (understood in terms of the objective division of reproductive labour) provides the foundation for certain cultural arrangements (the development of a gendered social identity). But, with the benefit of hindsight

we can see that maintaining a distinction between the objective category of sexed identity and the varied and culturally contingent practices of gender does not presume an absolute distinction of the old-fashioned sort between culture and a reified nature. (Alcoff 2006, 175)

That is, her view avoids the implausible claim that sex is exclusively to do with nature and gender with culture. Rather, the distinction on the basis of reproductive possibilities shapes and is shaped by the sorts of cultural and social phenomena (like varieties of social segregation) these possibilities gives rise to. For instance, technological interventions can alter sex differences illustrating that this is the case (Alcoff 2006, 175). Women’s specifically gendered social identities that are constituted by their context dependent positions, then, provide the starting point for feminist politics.

Recently Robin Dembroff (2020) has argued that existing metaphysical accounts of gender fail to address non-binary gender identities. This generates two concerns. First, metaphysical accounts of gender (like the ones outlined in previous sections) are insufficient for capturing those who reject binary gender categorisation where people are either men or women. In so doing, these accounts are not satisfying as explanations of gender understood in a more expansive sense that goes beyond the binary. Second, the failure to understand non-binary gender identities contributes to a form of epistemic injustice called ‘hermeneutical injustice’: it feeds into a collective failure to comprehend and analyse concepts and practices that undergird non-binary classification schemes, thereby impeding on one’s ability to fully understand themselves. To overcome these problems, Dembroff suggests an account of genderqueer that they call ‘critical gender kind’:

a kind whose members collectively destabilize one or more elements of dominant gender ideology. Genderqueer, on my proposed model, is a category whose members collectively destabilize the binary axis, or the idea that the only possible genders are the exclusive and exhaustive kinds men and women. (2020, 2)

Note that Dembroff’s position is not to be confused with ‘gender critical feminist’ positions like those noted above, which are critical of the prevalent feminist focus on gender, as opposed to sex, kinds. Dembroff understands genderqueer as a gender kind, but one that is critical of dominant binary understandings of gender.

Dembroff identifies two modes of destabilising the gender binary: principled and existential. Principled destabilising “stems from or otherwise expresses individuals’ social or political commitments regarding gender norms, practices, and structures”, while existential destabilising “stems from or otherwise expresses individuals’ felt or desired gender roles, embodiment, and/or categorization” (2020, 13). These modes are not mutually exclusive, and they can help us understand the difference between allies and members of genderqueer kinds: “While both resist dominant gender ideology, members of [genderqueer] kinds resist (at least in part) due to felt or desired gender categorization that deviates from dominant expectations, norms, and assumptions” (2020, 14). These modes of destabilisation also enable us to formulate an understanding of non-critical gender kinds that binary understandings of women and men’s kinds exemplify. Dembroff defines these kinds as follows:

For a given kind X , X is a non-critical gender kind relative to a given society iff X ’s members collectively restabilize one or more elements of the dominant gender ideology in that society. (2020, 14)

Dembroff’s understanding of critical and non-critical gender kinds importantly makes gender kind membership something more and other than a mere psychological phenomenon. To engage in collectively destabilising or restabilising dominant gender normativity and ideology, we need more than mere attitudes or mental states – resisting or maintaining such normativity requires action as well. In so doing, Dembroff puts their position forward as an alternative to two existing internalist positions about gender. First, to Jennifer McKitrick’s (2015) view whereby gender is dispositional: in a context where someone is disposed to behave in ways that would be taken by others to be indicative of (e.g.) womanhood, the person has a woman’s gender identity. Second, to Jenkin’s (2016, 2018) position that takes an individual’s gender identity to be dependent on which gender-specific norms the person experiences as being relevant to them. On this view, someone is a woman if the person experiences norms associated with women to be relevant to the person in the particular social context that they are in. Neither of these positions well-captures non-binary identities, Dembroff argues, which motivates the account of genderqueer identities as critical gender kinds.

As Dembroff acknowledges, substantive philosophical work on non-binary gender identities is still developing. However, it is important to note that analytic philosophers are beginning to engage in gender metaphysics that goes beyond the binary.

This entry first looked at feminist objections to biological determinism and the claim that gender is socially constructed. Next, it examined feminist critiques of prevalent understandings of gender and sex, and the distinction itself. In response to these concerns, the entry looked at how a unified women’s category could be articulated for feminist political purposes. This illustrated that gender metaphysics — or what it is to be a woman or a man or a genderqueer person — is still very much a live issue. And although contemporary feminist philosophical debates have questioned some of the tenets and details of the original 1960s sex/gender distinction, most still hold onto the view that gender is about social factors and that it is (in some sense) distinct from biological sex. The jury is still out on what the best, the most useful, or (even) the correct definition of gender is.

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Beauvoir, Simone de | feminist philosophy, approaches: intersections between analytic and continental philosophy | feminist philosophy, topics: perspectives on reproduction and the family | feminist philosophy, topics: perspectives on the self | homosexuality | identity politics | speech acts

Acknowledgments

I am very grateful to Tuukka Asplund, Jenny Saul, Alison Stone and Nancy Tuana for their extremely helpful and detailed comments when writing this entry.

Copyright © 2022 by Mari Mikkola < m . mikkola @ uva . nl >

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Research Article

Twenty years of gender equality research: A scoping review based on a new semantic indicator

Contributed equally to this work with: Paola Belingheri, Filippo Chiarello, Andrea Fronzetti Colladon, Paola Rovelli

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Energia, dei Sistemi, del Territorio e delle Costruzioni, Università degli Studi di Pisa, Largo L. Lazzarino, Pisa, Italy

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Software, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliations Department of Engineering, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy, Department of Management, Kozminski University, Warsaw, Poland

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Faculty of Economics and Management, Centre for Family Business Management, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bozen-Bolzano, Italy

• Paola Belingheri, 
• Filippo Chiarello, 
• Andrea Fronzetti Colladon, 
• Paola Rovelli

• Published: September 21, 2021
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474
• Reader Comments

9 Nov 2021: The PLOS ONE Staff (2021) Correction: Twenty years of gender equality research: A scoping review based on a new semantic indicator. PLOS ONE 16(11): e0259930. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259930 View correction

Gender equality is a major problem that places women at a disadvantage thereby stymieing economic growth and societal advancement. In the last two decades, extensive research has been conducted on gender related issues, studying both their antecedents and consequences. However, existing literature reviews fail to provide a comprehensive and clear picture of what has been studied so far, which could guide scholars in their future research. Our paper offers a scoping review of a large portion of the research that has been published over the last 22 years, on gender equality and related issues, with a specific focus on business and economics studies. Combining innovative methods drawn from both network analysis and text mining, we provide a synthesis of 15,465 scientific articles. We identify 27 main research topics, we measure their relevance from a semantic point of view and the relationships among them, highlighting the importance of each topic in the overall gender discourse. We find that prominent research topics mostly relate to women in the workforce–e.g., concerning compensation, role, education, decision-making and career progression. However, some of them are losing momentum, and some other research trends–for example related to female entrepreneurship, leadership and participation in the board of directors–are on the rise. Besides introducing a novel methodology to review broad literature streams, our paper offers a map of the main gender-research trends and presents the most popular and the emerging themes, as well as their intersections, outlining important avenues for future research.

Citation: Belingheri P, Chiarello F, Fronzetti Colladon A, Rovelli P (2021) Twenty years of gender equality research: A scoping review based on a new semantic indicator. PLoS ONE 16(9): e0256474. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474

Editor: Elisa Ughetto, Politecnico di Torino, ITALY

Received: June 25, 2021; Accepted: August 6, 2021; Published: September 21, 2021

Copyright: © 2021 Belingheri et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its supporting information files. The only exception is the text of the abstracts (over 15,000) that we have downloaded from Scopus. These abstracts can be retrieved from Scopus, but we do not have permission to redistribute them.

Funding: P.B and F.C.: Grant of the Department of Energy, Systems, Territory and Construction of the University of Pisa (DESTEC) for the project “Measuring Gender Bias with Semantic Analysis: The Development of an Assessment Tool and its Application in the European Space Industry. P.B., F.C., A.F.C., P.R.: Grant of the Italian Association of Management Engineering (AiIG), “Misure di sostegno ai soci giovani AiIG” 2020, for the project “Gender Equality Through Data Intelligence (GEDI)”. F.C.: EU project ASSETs+ Project (Alliance for Strategic Skills addressing Emerging Technologies in Defence) EAC/A03/2018 - Erasmus+ programme, Sector Skills Alliances, Lot 3: Sector Skills Alliance for implementing a new strategic approach (Blueprint) to sectoral cooperation on skills G.A. NUMBER: 612678-EPP-1-2019-1-IT-EPPKA2-SSA-B.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

The persistent gender inequalities that currently exist across the developed and developing world are receiving increasing attention from economists, policymakers, and the general public [e.g., 1 – 3 ]. Economic studies have indicated that women’s education and entry into the workforce contributes to social and economic well-being [e.g., 4 , 5 ], while their exclusion from the labor market and from managerial positions has an impact on overall labor productivity and income per capita [ 6 , 7 ]. The United Nations selected gender equality, with an emphasis on female education, as part of the Millennium Development Goals [ 8 ], and gender equality at-large as one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030 [ 9 ]. These latter objectives involve not only developing nations, but rather all countries, to achieve economic, social and environmental well-being.

As is the case with many SDGs, gender equality is still far from being achieved and persists across education, access to opportunities, or presence in decision-making positions [ 7 , 10 , 11 ]. As we enter the last decade for the SDGs’ implementation, and while we are battling a global health pandemic, effective and efficient action becomes paramount to reach this ambitious goal.

Scholars have dedicated a massive effort towards understanding gender equality, its determinants, its consequences for women and society, and the appropriate actions and policies to advance women’s equality. Many topics have been covered, ranging from women’s education and human capital [ 12 , 13 ] and their role in society [e.g., 14 , 15 ], to their appointment in firms’ top ranked positions [e.g., 16 , 17 ] and performance implications [e.g., 18 , 19 ]. Despite some attempts, extant literature reviews provide a narrow view on these issues, restricted to specific topics–e.g., female students’ presence in STEM fields [ 20 ], educational gender inequality [ 5 ], the gender pay gap [ 21 ], the glass ceiling effect [ 22 ], leadership [ 23 ], entrepreneurship [ 24 ], women’s presence on the board of directors [ 25 , 26 ], diversity management [ 27 ], gender stereotypes in advertisement [ 28 ], or specific professions [ 29 ]. A comprehensive view on gender-related research, taking stock of key findings and under-studied topics is thus lacking.

Extant literature has also highlighted that gender issues, and their economic and social ramifications, are complex topics that involve a large number of possible antecedents and outcomes [ 7 ]. Indeed, gender equality actions are most effective when implemented in unison with other SDGs (e.g., with SDG 8, see [ 30 ]) in a synergetic perspective [ 10 ]. Many bodies of literature (e.g., business, economics, development studies, sociology and psychology) approach the problem of achieving gender equality from different perspectives–often addressing specific and narrow aspects. This sometimes leads to a lack of clarity about how different issues, circumstances, and solutions may be related in precipitating or mitigating gender inequality or its effects. As the number of papers grows at an increasing pace, this issue is exacerbated and there is a need to step back and survey the body of gender equality literature as a whole. There is also a need to examine synergies between different topics and approaches, as well as gaps in our understanding of how different problems and solutions work together. Considering the important topic of women’s economic and social empowerment, this paper aims to fill this gap by answering the following research question: what are the most relevant findings in the literature on gender equality and how do they relate to each other ?

To do so, we conduct a scoping review [ 31 ], providing a synthesis of 15,465 articles dealing with gender equity related issues published in the last twenty-two years, covering both the periods of the MDGs and the SDGs (i.e., 2000 to mid 2021) in all the journals indexed in the Academic Journal Guide’s 2018 ranking of business and economics journals. Given the huge amount of research conducted on the topic, we adopt an innovative methodology, which relies on social network analysis and text mining. These techniques are increasingly adopted when surveying large bodies of text. Recently, they were applied to perform analysis of online gender communication differences [ 32 ] and gender behaviors in online technology communities [ 33 ], to identify and classify sexual harassment instances in academia [ 34 ], and to evaluate the gender inclusivity of disaster management policies [ 35 ].

Applied to the title, abstracts and keywords of the articles in our sample, this methodology allows us to identify a set of 27 recurrent topics within which we automatically classify the papers. Introducing additional novelty, by means of the Semantic Brand Score (SBS) indicator [ 36 ] and the SBS BI app [ 37 ], we assess the importance of each topic in the overall gender equality discourse and its relationships with the other topics, as well as trends over time, with a more accurate description than that offered by traditional literature reviews relying solely on the number of papers presented in each topic.

This methodology, applied to gender equality research spanning the past twenty-two years, enables two key contributions. First, we extract the main message that each document is conveying and how this is connected to other themes in literature, providing a rich picture of the topics that are at the center of the discourse, as well as of the emerging topics. Second, by examining the semantic relationship between topics and how tightly their discourses are linked, we can identify the key relationships and connections between different topics. This semi-automatic methodology is also highly reproducible with minimum effort.

This literature review is organized as follows. In the next section, we present how we selected relevant papers and how we analyzed them through text mining and social network analysis. We then illustrate the importance of 27 selected research topics, measured by means of the SBS indicator. In the results section, we present an overview of the literature based on the SBS results–followed by an in-depth narrative analysis of the top 10 topics (i.e., those with the highest SBS) and their connections. Subsequently, we highlight a series of under-studied connections between the topics where there is potential for future research. Through this analysis, we build a map of the main gender-research trends in the last twenty-two years–presenting the most popular themes. We conclude by highlighting key areas on which research should focused in the future.

Our aim is to map a broad topic, gender equality research, that has been approached through a host of different angles and through different disciplines. Scoping reviews are the most appropriate as they provide the freedom to map different themes and identify literature gaps, thereby guiding the recommendation of new research agendas [ 38 ].

Several practical approaches have been proposed to identify and assess the underlying topics of a specific field using big data [ 39 – 41 ], but many of them fail without proper paper retrieval and text preprocessing. This is specifically true for a research field such as the gender-related one, which comprises the work of scholars from different backgrounds. In this section, we illustrate a novel approach for the analysis of scientific (gender-related) papers that relies on methods and tools of social network analysis and text mining. Our procedure has four main steps: (1) data collection, (2) text preprocessing, (3) keywords extraction and classification, and (4) evaluation of semantic importance and image.

Data collection

In this study, we analyze 22 years of literature on gender-related research. Following established practice for scoping reviews [ 42 ], our data collection consisted of two main steps, which we summarize here below.

Firstly, we retrieved from the Scopus database all the articles written in English that contained the term “gender” in their title, abstract or keywords and were published in a journal listed in the Academic Journal Guide 2018 ranking of the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS) ( https://charteredabs.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/AJG2018-Methodology.pdf ), considering the time period from Jan 2000 to May 2021. We used this information considering that abstracts, titles and keywords represent the most informative part of a paper, while using the full-text would increase the signal-to-noise ratio for information extraction. Indeed, these textual elements already demonstrated to be reliable sources of information for the task of domain lexicon extraction [ 43 , 44 ]. We chose Scopus as source of literature because of its popularity, its update rate, and because it offers an API to ease the querying process. Indeed, while it does not allow to retrieve the full text of scientific articles, the Scopus API offers access to titles, abstracts, citation information and metadata for all its indexed scholarly journals. Moreover, we decided to focus on the journals listed in the AJG 2018 ranking because we were interested in reviewing business and economics related gender studies only. The AJG is indeed widely used by universities and business schools as a reference point for journal and research rigor and quality. This first step, executed in June 2021, returned more than 55,000 papers.

In the second step–because a look at the papers showed very sparse results, many of which were not in line with the topic of this literature review (e.g., papers dealing with health care or medical issues, where the word gender indicates the gender of the patients)–we applied further inclusion criteria to make the sample more focused on the topic of this literature review (i.e., women’s gender equality issues). Specifically, we only retained those papers mentioning, in their title and/or abstract, both gender-related keywords (e.g., daughter, female, mother) and keywords referring to bias and equality issues (e.g., equality, bias, diversity, inclusion). After text pre-processing (see next section), keywords were first identified from a frequency-weighted list of words found in the titles, abstracts and keywords in the initial list of papers, extracted through text mining (following the same approach as [ 43 ]). They were selected by two of the co-authors independently, following respectively a bottom up and a top-down approach. The bottom-up approach consisted of examining the words found in the frequency-weighted list and classifying those related to gender and equality. The top-down approach consisted in searching in the word list for notable gender and equality-related words. Table 1 reports the sets of keywords we considered, together with some examples of words that were used to search for their presence in the dataset (a full list is provided in the S1 Text ). At end of this second step, we obtained a final sample of 15,465 relevant papers.

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.t001

Text processing and keyword extraction

Text preprocessing aims at structuring text into a form that can be analyzed by statistical models. In the present section, we describe the preprocessing steps we applied to paper titles and abstracts, which, as explained below, partially follow a standard text preprocessing pipeline [ 45 ]. These activities have been performed using the R package udpipe [ 46 ].

The first step is n-gram extraction (i.e., a sequence of words from a given text sample) to identify which n-grams are important in the analysis, since domain-specific lexicons are often composed by bi-grams and tri-grams [ 47 ]. Multi-word extraction is usually implemented with statistics and linguistic rules, thus using the statistical properties of n-grams or machine learning approaches [ 48 ]. However, for the present paper, we used Scopus metadata in order to have a more effective and efficient n-grams collection approach [ 49 ]. We used the keywords of each paper in order to tag n-grams with their associated keywords automatically. Using this greedy approach, it was possible to collect all the keywords listed by the authors of the papers. From this list, we extracted only keywords composed by two, three and four words, we removed all the acronyms and rare keywords (i.e., appearing in less than 1% of papers), and we clustered keywords showing a high orthographic similarity–measured using a Levenshtein distance [ 50 ] lower than 2, considering these groups of keywords as representing same concepts, but expressed with different spelling. After tagging the n-grams in the abstracts, we followed a common data preparation pipeline that consists of the following steps: (i) tokenization, that splits the text into tokens (i.e., single words and previously tagged multi-words); (ii) removal of stop-words (i.e. those words that add little meaning to the text, usually being very common and short functional words–such as “and”, “or”, or “of”); (iii) parts-of-speech tagging, that is providing information concerning the morphological role of a word and its morphosyntactic context (e.g., if the token is a determiner, the next token is a noun or an adjective with very high confidence, [ 51 ]); and (iv) lemmatization, which consists in substituting each word with its dictionary form (or lemma). The output of the latter step allows grouping together the inflected forms of a word. For example, the verbs “am”, “are”, and “is” have the shared lemma “be”, or the nouns “cat” and “cats” both share the lemma “cat”. We preferred lemmatization over stemming [ 52 ] in order to obtain more interpretable results.

In addition, we identified a further set of keywords (with respect to those listed in the “keywords” field) by applying a series of automatic words unification and removal steps, as suggested in past research [ 53 , 54 ]. We removed: sparse terms (i.e., occurring in less than 0.1% of all documents), common terms (i.e., occurring in more than 10% of all documents) and retained only nouns and adjectives. It is relevant to notice that no document was lost due to these steps. We then used the TF-IDF function [ 55 ] to produce a new list of keywords. We additionally tested other approaches for the identification and clustering of keywords–such as TextRank [ 56 ] or Latent Dirichlet Allocation [ 57 ]–without obtaining more informative results.

Classification of research topics

To guide the literature analysis, two experts met regularly to examine the sample of collected papers and to identify the main topics and trends in gender research. Initially, they conducted brainstorming sessions on the topics they expected to find, due to their knowledge of the literature. This led to an initial list of topics. Subsequently, the experts worked independently, also supported by the keywords in paper titles and abstracts extracted with the procedure described above.

Considering all this information, each expert identified and clustered relevant keywords into topics. At the end of the process, the two assignments were compared and exhibited a 92% agreement. Another meeting was held to discuss discordant cases and reach a consensus. This resulted in a list of 27 topics, briefly introduced in Table 2 and subsequently detailed in the following sections.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.t002

Evaluation of semantic importance

Working on the lemmatized corpus of the 15,465 papers included in our sample, we proceeded with the evaluation of semantic importance trends for each topic and with the analysis of their connections and prevalent textual associations. To this aim, we used the Semantic Brand Score indicator [ 36 ], calculated through the SBS BI webapp [ 37 ] that also produced a brand image report for each topic. For this study we relied on the computing resources of the ENEA/CRESCO infrastructure [ 58 ].

The Semantic Brand Score (SBS) is a measure of semantic importance that combines methods of social network analysis and text mining. It is usually applied for the analysis of (big) textual data to evaluate the importance of one or more brands, names, words, or sets of keywords [ 36 ]. Indeed, the concept of “brand” is intended in a flexible way and goes beyond products or commercial brands. In this study, we evaluate the SBS time-trends of the keywords defining the research topics discussed in the previous section. Semantic importance comprises the three dimensions of topic prevalence, diversity and connectivity. Prevalence measures how frequently a research topic is used in the discourse. The more a topic is mentioned by scientific articles, the more the research community will be aware of it, with possible increase of future studies; this construct is partly related to that of brand awareness [ 59 ]. This effect is even stronger, considering that we are analyzing the title, abstract and keywords of the papers, i.e. the parts that have the highest visibility. A very important characteristic of the SBS is that it considers the relationships among words in a text. Topic importance is not just a matter of how frequently a topic is mentioned, but also of the associations a topic has in the text. Specifically, texts are transformed into networks of co-occurring words, and relationships are studied through social network analysis [ 60 ]. This step is necessary to calculate the other two dimensions of our semantic importance indicator. Accordingly, a social network of words is generated for each time period considered in the analysis–i.e., a graph made of n nodes (words) and E edges weighted by co-occurrence frequency, with W being the set of edge weights. The keywords representing each topic were clustered into single nodes.

The construct of diversity relates to that of brand image [ 59 ], in the sense that it considers the richness and distinctiveness of textual (topic) associations. Considering the above-mentioned networks, we calculated diversity using the distinctiveness centrality metric–as in the formula presented by Fronzetti Colladon and Naldi [ 61 ].

Lastly, connectivity was measured as the weighted betweenness centrality [ 62 , 63 ] of each research topic node. We used the formula presented by Wasserman and Faust [ 60 ]. The dimension of connectivity represents the “brokerage power” of each research topic–i.e., how much it can serve as a bridge to connect other terms (and ultimately topics) in the discourse [ 36 ].

The SBS is the final composite indicator obtained by summing the standardized scores of prevalence, diversity and connectivity. Standardization was carried out considering all the words in the corpus, for each specific timeframe.

This methodology, applied to a large and heterogeneous body of text, enables to automatically identify two important sets of information that add value to the literature review. Firstly, the relevance of each topic in literature is measured through a composite indicator of semantic importance, rather than simply looking at word frequencies. This provides a much richer picture of the topics that are at the center of the discourse, as well as of the topics that are emerging in the literature. Secondly, it enables to examine the extent of the semantic relationship between topics, looking at how tightly their discourses are linked. In a field such as gender equality, where many topics are closely linked to each other and present overlaps in issues and solutions, this methodology offers a novel perspective with respect to traditional literature reviews. In addition, it ensures reproducibility over time and the possibility to semi-automatically update the analysis, as new papers become available.

Overview of main topics

In terms of descriptive textual statistics, our corpus is made of 15,465 text documents, consisting of a total of 2,685,893 lemmatized tokens (words) and 32,279 types. As a result, the type-token ratio is 1.2%. The number of hapaxes is 12,141, with a hapax-token ratio of 37.61%.

Fig 1 shows the list of 27 topics by decreasing SBS. The most researched topic is compensation , exceeding all others in prevalence, diversity, and connectivity. This means it is not only mentioned more often than other topics, but it is also connected to a greater number of other topics and is central to the discourse on gender equality. The next four topics are, in order of SBS, role , education , decision-making , and career progression . These topics, except for education , all concern women in the workforce. Between these first five topics and the following ones there is a clear drop in SBS scores. In particular, the topics that follow have a lower connectivity than the first five. They are hiring , performance , behavior , organization , and human capital . Again, except for behavior and human capital , the other three topics are purely related to women in the workforce. After another drop-off, the following topics deal prevalently with women in society. This trend highlights that research on gender in business journals has so far mainly paid attention to the conditions that women experience in business contexts, while also devoting some attention to women in society.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.g001

Fig 2 shows the SBS time series of the top 10 topics. While there has been a general increase in the number of Scopus-indexed publications in the last decade, we notice that some SBS trends remain steady, or even decrease. In particular, we observe that the main topic of the last twenty-two years, compensation , is losing momentum. Since 2016, it has been surpassed by decision-making , education and role , which may indicate that literature is increasingly attempting to identify root causes of compensation inequalities. Moreover, in the last two years, the topics of hiring , performance , and organization are experiencing the largest importance increase.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.g002

Fig 3 shows the SBS time trends of the remaining 17 topics (i.e., those not in the top 10). As we can see from the graph, there are some that maintain a steady trend–such as reputation , management , networks and governance , which also seem to have little importance. More relevant topics with average stationary trends (except for the last two years) are culture , family , and parenting . The feminine topic is among the most important here, and one of those that exhibit the larger variations over time (similarly to leadership ). On the other hand, the are some topics that, even if not among the most important, show increasing SBS trends; therefore, they could be considered as emerging topics and could become popular in the near future. These are entrepreneurship , leadership , board of directors , and sustainability . These emerging topics are also interesting to anticipate future trends in gender equality research that are conducive to overall equality in society.

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In addition to the SBS score of the different topics, the network of terms they are associated to enables to gauge the extent to which their images (textual associations) overlap or differ ( Fig 4 ).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.g004

There is a central cluster of topics with high similarity, which are all connected with women in the workforce. The cluster includes topics such as organization , decision-making , performance , hiring , human capital , education and compensation . In addition, the topic of well-being is found within this cluster, suggesting that women’s equality in the workforce is associated to well-being considerations. The emerging topics of entrepreneurship and leadership are also closely connected with each other, possibly implying that leadership is a much-researched quality in female entrepreneurship. Topics that are relatively more distant include personality , politics , feminine , empowerment , management , board of directors , reputation , governance , parenting , masculine and network .

The following sections describe the top 10 topics and their main associations in literature (see Table 3 ), while providing a brief overview of the emerging topics.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.t003

Compensation.

The topic of compensation is related to the topics of role , hiring , education and career progression , however, also sees a very high association with the words gap and inequality . Indeed, a well-known debate in degrowth economics centers around whether and how to adequately compensate women for their childbearing, childrearing, caregiver and household work [e.g., 30 ].

Even in paid work, women continue being offered lower compensations than their male counterparts who have the same job or cover the same role [ 64 – 67 ]. This severe inequality has been widely studied by scholars over the last twenty-two years. Dealing with this topic, some specific roles have been addressed. Specifically, research highlighted differences in compensation between female and male CEOs [e.g., 68 ], top executives [e.g., 69 ], and boards’ directors [e.g., 70 ]. Scholars investigated the determinants of these gaps, such as the gender composition of the board [e.g., 71 – 73 ] or women’s individual characteristics [e.g., 71 , 74 ].

Among these individual characteristics, education plays a relevant role [ 75 ]. Education is indeed presented as the solution for women, not only to achieve top executive roles, but also to reduce wage inequality [e.g., 76 , 77 ]. Past research has highlighted education influences on gender wage gaps, specifically referring to gender differences in skills [e.g., 78 ], college majors [e.g., 79 ], and college selectivity [e.g., 80 ].

Finally, the wage gap issue is strictly interrelated with hiring –e.g., looking at whether being a mother affects hiring and compensation [e.g., 65 , 81 ] or relating compensation to unemployment [e.g., 82 ]–and career progression –for instance looking at meritocracy [ 83 , 84 ] or the characteristics of the boss for whom women work [e.g., 85 ].

The roles covered by women have been deeply investigated. Scholars have focused on the role of women in their families and the society as a whole [e.g., 14 , 15 ], and, more widely, in business contexts [e.g., 18 , 81 ]. Indeed, despite still lagging behind their male counterparts [e.g., 86 , 87 ], in the last decade there has been an increase in top ranked positions achieved by women [e.g., 88 , 89 ]. Following this phenomenon, scholars have posed greater attention towards the presence of women in the board of directors [e.g., 16 , 18 , 90 , 91 ], given the increasing pressure to appoint female directors that firms, especially listed ones, have experienced. Other scholars have focused on the presence of women covering the role of CEO [e.g., 17 , 92 ] or being part of the top management team [e.g., 93 ]. Irrespectively of the level of analysis, all these studies tried to uncover the antecedents of women’s presence among top managers [e.g., 92 , 94 ] and the consequences of having a them involved in the firm’s decision-making –e.g., on performance [e.g., 19 , 95 , 96 ], risk [e.g., 97 , 98 ], and corporate social responsibility [e.g., 99 , 100 ].

Besides studying the difficulties and discriminations faced by women in getting a job [ 81 , 101 ], and, more specifically in the hiring , appointment, or career progression to these apical roles [e.g., 70 , 83 ], the majority of research of women’s roles dealt with compensation issues. Specifically, scholars highlight the pay-gap that still exists between women and men, both in general [e.g., 64 , 65 ], as well as referring to boards’ directors [e.g., 70 , 102 ], CEOs and executives [e.g., 69 , 103 , 104 ].

Finally, other scholars focused on the behavior of women when dealing with business. In this sense, particular attention has been paid to leadership and entrepreneurial behaviors. The former quite overlaps with dealing with the roles mentioned above, but also includes aspects such as leaders being stereotyped as masculine [e.g., 105 ], the need for greater exposure to female leaders to reduce biases [e.g., 106 ], or female leaders acting as queen bees [e.g., 107 ]. Regarding entrepreneurship , scholars mainly investigated women’s entrepreneurial entry [e.g., 108 , 109 ], differences between female and male entrepreneurs in the evaluations and funding received from investors [e.g., 110 , 111 ], and their performance gap [e.g., 112 , 113 ].

Education has long been recognized as key to social advancement and economic stability [ 114 ], for job progression and also a barrier to gender equality, especially in STEM-related fields. Research on education and gender equality is mostly linked with the topics of compensation , human capital , career progression , hiring , parenting and decision-making .

Education contributes to a higher human capital [ 115 ] and constitutes an investment on the part of women towards their future. In this context, literature points to the gender gap in educational attainment, and the consequences for women from a social, economic, personal and professional standpoint. Women are found to have less access to formal education and information, especially in emerging countries, which in turn may cause them to lose social and economic opportunities [e.g., 12 , 116 – 119 ]. Education in local and rural communities is also paramount to communicate the benefits of female empowerment , contributing to overall societal well-being [e.g., 120 ].

Once women access education, the image they have of the world and their place in society (i.e., habitus) affects their education performance [ 13 ] and is passed on to their children. These situations reinforce gender stereotypes, which become self-fulfilling prophecies that may negatively affect female students’ performance by lowering their confidence and heightening their anxiety [ 121 , 122 ]. Besides formal education, also the information that women are exposed to on a daily basis contributes to their human capital . Digital inequalities, for instance, stems from men spending more time online and acquiring higher digital skills than women [ 123 ].

Education is also a factor that should boost employability of candidates and thus hiring , career progression and compensation , however the relationship between these factors is not straightforward [ 115 ]. First, educational choices ( decision-making ) are influenced by variables such as self-efficacy and the presence of barriers, irrespectively of the career opportunities they offer, especially in STEM [ 124 ]. This brings additional difficulties to women’s enrollment and persistence in scientific and technical fields of study due to stereotypes and biases [ 125 , 126 ]. Moreover, access to education does not automatically translate into job opportunities for women and minority groups [ 127 , 128 ] or into female access to managerial positions [ 129 ].

Finally, parenting is reported as an antecedent of education [e.g., 130 ], with much of the literature focusing on the role of parents’ education on the opportunities afforded to children to enroll in education [ 131 – 134 ] and the role of parenting in their offspring’s perception of study fields and attitudes towards learning [ 135 – 138 ]. Parental education is also a predictor of the other related topics, namely human capital and compensation [ 139 ].

Decision-making.

This literature mainly points to the fact that women are thought to make decisions differently than men. Women have indeed different priorities, such as they care more about people’s well-being, working with people or helping others, rather than maximizing their personal (or their firm’s) gain [ 140 ]. In other words, women typically present more communal than agentic behaviors, which are instead more frequent among men [ 141 ]. These different attitude, behavior and preferences in turn affect the decisions they make [e.g., 142 ] and the decision-making of the firm in which they work [e.g., 143 ].

At the individual level, gender affects, for instance, career aspirations [e.g., 144 ] and choices [e.g., 142 , 145 ], or the decision of creating a venture [e.g., 108 , 109 , 146 ]. Moreover, in everyday life, women and men make different decisions regarding partners [e.g., 147 ], childcare [e.g., 148 ], education [e.g., 149 ], attention to the environment [e.g., 150 ] and politics [e.g., 151 ].

At the firm level, scholars highlighted, for example, how the presence of women in the board affects corporate decisions [e.g., 152 , 153 ], that female CEOs are more conservative in accounting decisions [e.g., 154 ], or that female CFOs tend to make more conservative decisions regarding the firm’s financial reporting [e.g., 155 ]. Nevertheless, firm level research also investigated decisions that, influenced by gender bias, affect women, such as those pertaining hiring [e.g., 156 , 157 ], compensation [e.g., 73 , 158 ], or the empowerment of women once appointed [ 159 ].

Career progression.

Once women have entered the workforce, the key aspect to achieve gender equality becomes career progression , including efforts toward overcoming the glass ceiling. Indeed, according to the SBS analysis, career progression is highly related to words such as work, social issues and equality. The topic with which it has the highest semantic overlap is role , followed by decision-making , hiring , education , compensation , leadership , human capital , and family .

Career progression implies an advancement in the hierarchical ladder of the firm, assigning managerial roles to women. Coherently, much of the literature has focused on identifying rationales for a greater female participation in the top management team and board of directors [e.g., 95 ] as well as the best criteria to ensure that the decision-makers promote the most valuable employees irrespectively of their individual characteristics, such as gender [e.g., 84 ]. The link between career progression , role and compensation is often provided in practice by performance appraisal exercises, frequently rooted in a culture of meritocracy that guides bonuses, salary increases and promotions. However, performance appraisals can actually mask gender-biased decisions where women are held to higher standards than their male colleagues [e.g., 83 , 84 , 95 , 160 , 161 ]. Women often have less opportunities to gain leadership experience and are less visible than their male colleagues, which constitute barriers to career advancement [e.g., 162 ]. Therefore, transparency and accountability, together with procedures that discourage discretionary choices, are paramount to achieve a fair career progression [e.g., 84 ], together with the relaxation of strict job boundaries in favor of cross-functional and self-directed tasks [e.g., 163 ].

In addition, a series of stereotypes about the type of leadership characteristics that are required for top management positions, which fit better with typical male and agentic attributes, are another key barrier to career advancement for women [e.g., 92 , 160 ].

Hiring is the entrance gateway for women into the workforce. Therefore, it is related to other workforce topics such as compensation , role , career progression , decision-making , human capital , performance , organization and education .

A first stream of literature focuses on the process leading up to candidates’ job applications, demonstrating that bias exists before positions are even opened, and it is perpetuated both by men and women through networking and gatekeeping practices [e.g., 164 , 165 ].

The hiring process itself is also subject to biases [ 166 ], for example gender-congruity bias that leads to men being preferred candidates in male-dominated sectors [e.g., 167 ], women being hired in positions with higher risk of failure [e.g., 168 ] and limited transparency and accountability afforded by written processes and procedures [e.g., 164 ] that all contribute to ascriptive inequality. In addition, providing incentives for evaluators to hire women may actually work to this end; however, this is not the case when supporting female candidates endangers higher-ranking male ones [ 169 ].

Another interesting perspective, instead, looks at top management teams’ composition and the effects on hiring practices, indicating that firms with more women in top management are less likely to lay off staff [e.g., 152 ].

Performance.

Several scholars posed their attention towards women’s performance, its consequences [e.g., 170 , 171 ] and the implications of having women in decision-making positions [e.g., 18 , 19 ].

At the individual level, research focused on differences in educational and academic performance between women and men, especially referring to the gender gap in STEM fields [e.g., 171 ]. The presence of stereotype threats–that is the expectation that the members of a social group (e.g., women) “must deal with the possibility of being judged or treated stereotypically, or of doing something that would confirm the stereotype” [ 172 ]–affects women’s interested in STEM [e.g., 173 ], as well as their cognitive ability tests, penalizing them [e.g., 174 ]. A stronger gender identification enhances this gap [e.g., 175 ], whereas mentoring and role models can be used as solutions to this problem [e.g., 121 ]. Despite the negative effect of stereotype threats on girls’ performance [ 176 ], female and male students perform equally in mathematics and related subjects [e.g., 177 ]. Moreover, while individuals’ performance at school and university generally affects their achievements and the field in which they end up working, evidence reveals that performance in math or other scientific subjects does not explain why fewer women enter STEM working fields; rather this gap depends on other aspects, such as culture, past working experiences, or self-efficacy [e.g., 170 ]. Finally, scholars have highlighted the penalization that women face for their positive performance, for instance when they succeed in traditionally male areas [e.g., 178 ]. This penalization is explained by the violation of gender-stereotypic prescriptions [e.g., 179 , 180 ], that is having women well performing in agentic areas, which are typical associated to men. Performance penalization can thus be overcome by clearly conveying communal characteristics and behaviors [ 178 ].

Evidence has been provided on how the involvement of women in boards of directors and decision-making positions affects firms’ performance. Nevertheless, results are mixed, with some studies showing positive effects on financial [ 19 , 181 , 182 ] and corporate social performance [ 99 , 182 , 183 ]. Other studies maintain a negative association [e.g., 18 ], and other again mixed [e.g., 184 ] or non-significant association [e.g., 185 ]. Also with respect to the presence of a female CEO, mixed results emerged so far, with some researches demonstrating a positive effect on firm’s performance [e.g., 96 , 186 ], while other obtaining only a limited evidence of this relationship [e.g., 103 ] or a negative one [e.g., 187 ].

Finally, some studies have investigated whether and how women’s performance affects their hiring [e.g., 101 ] and career progression [e.g., 83 , 160 ]. For instance, academic performance leads to different returns in hiring for women and men. Specifically, high-achieving men are called back significantly more often than high-achieving women, which are penalized when they have a major in mathematics; this result depends on employers’ gendered standards for applicants [e.g., 101 ]. Once appointed, performance ratings are more strongly related to promotions for women than men, and promoted women typically show higher past performance ratings than those of promoted men. This suggesting that women are subject to stricter standards for promotion [e.g., 160 ].

Behavioral aspects related to gender follow two main streams of literature. The first examines female personality and behavior in the workplace, and their alignment with cultural expectations or stereotypes [e.g., 188 ] as well as their impacts on equality. There is a common bias that depicts women as less agentic than males. Certain characteristics, such as those more congruent with male behaviors–e.g., self-promotion [e.g., 189 ], negotiation skills [e.g., 190 ] and general agentic behavior [e.g., 191 ]–, are less accepted in women. However, characteristics such as individualism in women have been found to promote greater gender equality in society [ 192 ]. In addition, behaviors such as display of emotions [e.g., 193 ], which are stereotypically female, work against women’s acceptance in the workplace, requiring women to carefully moderate their behavior to avoid exclusion. A counter-intuitive result is that women and minorities, which are more marginalized in the workplace, tend to be better problem-solvers in innovation competitions due to their different knowledge bases [ 194 ].

The other side of the coin is examined in a parallel literature stream on behavior towards women in the workplace. As a result of biases, prejudices and stereotypes, women may experience adverse behavior from their colleagues, such as incivility and harassment, which undermine their well-being [e.g., 195 , 196 ]. Biases that go beyond gender, such as for overweight people, are also more strongly applied to women [ 197 ].

Organization.

The role of women and gender bias in organizations has been studied from different perspectives, which mirror those presented in detail in the following sections. Specifically, most research highlighted the stereotypical view of leaders [e.g., 105 ] and the roles played by women within firms, for instance referring to presence in the board of directors [e.g., 18 , 90 , 91 ], appointment as CEOs [e.g., 16 ], or top executives [e.g., 93 ].

Scholars have investigated antecedents and consequences of the presence of women in these apical roles. On the one side they looked at hiring and career progression [e.g., 83 , 92 , 160 , 168 , 198 ], finding women typically disadvantaged with respect to their male counterparts. On the other side, they studied women’s leadership styles and influence on the firm’s decision-making [e.g., 152 , 154 , 155 , 199 ], with implications for performance [e.g., 18 , 19 , 96 ].

Human capital.

Human capital is a transverse topic that touches upon many different aspects of female gender equality. As such, it has the most associations with other topics, starting with education as mentioned above, with career-related topics such as role , decision-making , hiring , career progression , performance , compensation , leadership and organization . Another topic with which there is a close connection is behavior . In general, human capital is approached both from the education standpoint but also from the perspective of social capital.

The behavioral aspect in human capital comprises research related to gender differences for example in cultural and religious beliefs that influence women’s attitudes and perceptions towards STEM subjects [ 142 , 200 – 202 ], towards employment [ 203 ] or towards environmental issues [ 150 , 204 ]. These cultural differences also emerge in the context of globalization which may accelerate gender equality in the workforce [ 205 , 206 ]. Gender differences also appear in behaviors such as motivation [ 207 ], and in negotiation [ 190 ], and have repercussions on women’s decision-making related to their careers. The so-called gender equality paradox sees women in countries with lower gender equality more likely to pursue studies and careers in STEM fields, whereas the gap in STEM enrollment widens as countries achieve greater equality in society [ 171 ].

Career progression is modeled by literature as a choice-process where personal preferences, culture and decision-making affect the chosen path and the outcomes. Some literature highlights how women tend to self-select into different professions than men, often due to stereotypes rather than actual ability to perform in these professions [ 142 , 144 ]. These stereotypes also affect the perceptions of female performance or the amount of human capital required to equal male performance [ 110 , 193 , 208 ], particularly for mothers [ 81 ]. It is therefore often assumed that women are better suited to less visible and less leadership -oriented roles [ 209 ]. Women also express differing preferences towards work-family balance, which affect whether and how they pursue human capital gains [ 210 ], and ultimately their career progression and salary .

On the other hand, men are often unaware of gendered processes and behaviors that they carry forward in their interactions and decision-making [ 211 , 212 ]. Therefore, initiatives aimed at increasing managers’ human capital –by raising awareness of gender disparities in their organizations and engaging them in diversity promotion–are essential steps to counter gender bias and segregation [ 213 ].

Emerging topics: Leadership and entrepreneurship

Among the emerging topics, the most pervasive one is women reaching leadership positions in the workforce and in society. This is still a rare occurrence for two main types of factors, on the one hand, bias and discrimination make it harder for women to access leadership positions [e.g., 214 – 216 ], on the other hand, the competitive nature and high pressure associated with leadership positions, coupled with the lack of women currently represented, reduce women’s desire to achieve them [e.g., 209 , 217 ]. Women are more effective leaders when they have access to education, resources and a diverse environment with representation [e.g., 218 , 219 ].

One sector where there is potential for women to carve out a leadership role is entrepreneurship . Although at the start of the millennium the discourse on entrepreneurship was found to be “discriminatory, gender-biased, ethnocentrically determined and ideologically controlled” [ 220 ], an increasing body of literature is studying how to stimulate female entrepreneurship as an alternative pathway to wealth, leadership and empowerment [e.g., 221 ]. Many barriers exist for women to access entrepreneurship, including the institutional and legal environment, social and cultural factors, access to knowledge and resources, and individual behavior [e.g., 222 , 223 ]. Education has been found to raise women’s entrepreneurial intentions [e.g., 224 ], although this effect is smaller than for men [e.g., 109 ]. In addition, increasing self-efficacy and risk-taking behavior constitute important success factors [e.g., 225 ].

Finally, the topic of sustainability is worth mentioning, as it is the primary objective of the SDGs and is closely associated with societal well-being. As society grapples with the effects of climate change and increasing depletion of natural resources, a narrative has emerged on women and their greater link to the environment [ 226 ]. Studies in developed countries have found some support for women leaders’ attention to sustainability issues in firms [e.g., 227 – 229 ], and smaller resource consumption by women [ 230 ]. At the same time, women will likely be more affected by the consequences of climate change [e.g., 230 ] but often lack the decision-making power to influence local decision-making on resource management and environmental policies [e.g., 231 ].

Research gaps and conclusions

Research on gender equality has advanced rapidly in the past decades, with a steady increase in publications, both in mainstream topics related to women in education and the workforce, and in emerging topics. Through a novel approach combining methods of text mining and social network analysis, we examined a comprehensive body of literature comprising 15,465 papers published between 2000 and mid 2021 on topics related to gender equality. We identified a set of 27 topics addressed by the literature and examined their connections.

At the highest level of abstraction, it is worth noting that papers abound on the identification of issues related to gender inequalities and imbalances in the workforce and in society. Literature has thoroughly examined the (unconscious) biases, barriers, stereotypes, and discriminatory behaviors that women are facing as a result of their gender. Instead, there are much fewer papers that discuss or demonstrate effective solutions to overcome gender bias [e.g., 121 , 143 , 145 , 163 , 194 , 213 , 232 ]. This is partly due to the relative ease in studying the status quo, as opposed to studying changes in the status quo. However, we observed a shift in the more recent years towards solution seeking in this domain, which we strongly encourage future researchers to focus on. In the future, we may focus on collecting and mapping pro-active contributions to gender studies, using additional Natural Language Processing techniques, able to measure the sentiment of scientific papers [ 43 ].

All of the mainstream topics identified in our literature review are closely related, and there is a wealth of insights looking at the intersection between issues such as education and career progression or human capital and role . However, emerging topics are worthy of being furtherly explored. It would be interesting to see more work on the topic of female entrepreneurship , exploring aspects such as education , personality , governance , management and leadership . For instance, how can education support female entrepreneurship? How can self-efficacy and risk-taking behaviors be taught or enhanced? What are the differences in managerial and governance styles of female entrepreneurs? Which personality traits are associated with successful entrepreneurs? Which traits are preferred by venture capitalists and funding bodies?

The emerging topic of sustainability also deserves further attention, as our society struggles with climate change and its consequences. It would be interesting to see more research on the intersection between sustainability and entrepreneurship , looking at how female entrepreneurs are tackling sustainability issues, examining both their business models and their company governance . In addition, scholars are suggested to dig deeper into the relationship between family values and behaviors.

Moreover, it would be relevant to understand how women’s networks (social capital), or the composition and structure of social networks involving both women and men, enable them to increase their remuneration and reach top corporate positions, participate in key decision-making bodies, and have a voice in communities. Furthermore, the achievement of gender equality might significantly change firm networks and ecosystems, with important implications for their performance and survival.

Similarly, research at the nexus of (corporate) governance , career progression , compensation and female empowerment could yield useful insights–for example discussing how enterprises, institutions and countries are managed and the impact for women and other minorities. Are there specific governance structures that favor diversity and inclusion?

Lastly, we foresee an emerging stream of research pertaining how the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic challenged women, especially in the workforce, by making gender biases more evident.

For our analysis, we considered a set of 15,465 articles downloaded from the Scopus database (which is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature). As we were interested in reviewing business and economics related gender studies, we only considered those papers published in journals listed in the Academic Journal Guide (AJG) 2018 ranking of the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS). All the journals listed in this ranking are also indexed by Scopus. Therefore, looking at a single database (i.e., Scopus) should not be considered a limitation of our study. However, future research could consider different databases and inclusion criteria.

With our literature review, we offer researchers a comprehensive map of major gender-related research trends over the past twenty-two years. This can serve as a lens to look to the future, contributing to the achievement of SDG5. Researchers may use our study as a starting point to identify key themes addressed in the literature. In addition, our methodological approach–based on the use of the Semantic Brand Score and its webapp–could support scholars interested in reviewing other areas of research.

Supporting information

S1 text. keywords used for paper selection..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.s001

Acknowledgments

The computing resources and the related technical support used for this work have been provided by CRESCO/ENEAGRID High Performance Computing infrastructure and its staff. CRESCO/ENEAGRID High Performance Computing infrastructure is funded by ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development and by Italian and European research programmes (see http://www.cresco.enea.it/english for information).

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Introduction to Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies

(30 reviews)

Miliann Kang, University of Massachusetts

Donovan Lessard

Laura Heston, University of Massachusetts

Sonny Nordmarken, University of Massachusetts

Copyright Year: 2017

ISBN 13: 9781945764028

Publisher: UMass Amherst

Language: English

Formats Available

Conditions of use.

Learn more about reviews.

Reviewed by Melvina Khalfani, Community Faculty, Metropolitan State University on 3/5/24

This text offers a comprehensive introductory guide to key concepts and topics relevant to Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Helpful historical context is offered to guide students' understandings of the social and political relevance of core... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

This text offers a comprehensive introductory guide to key concepts and topics relevant to Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Helpful historical context is offered to guide students' understandings of the social and political relevance of core concepts and terms. This makes a wonderful complementary text when paired with other instructor videos and articles that discuss similar topics in greater detail.

Content Accuracy rating: 4

The content is accurate and incorporates important shifts within the field over the last decade.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

This text delves into current political movements well and situates the current landscape in the greater context of feminist history and scholarship. It is up to date when considering its publication year.

Clarity rating: 5

The clarity of this text is useful for students who lack a basic familiarity with GWSS topics. The explanations for core terms are very accessible. This offers a helpful primer for students at the start of the semester.

Consistency rating: 5

The frameworks and language deployed through the text are consistent and clear.

Modularity rating: 5

The text is broken down into five units, with each unit further broken down into several sections related to important subtopics. This makes the text easy to assign in sections and pair with other course materials that delve into the subtopics with more depth.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

The organization makes sense. The text helpfully walks readers through each core topic, which builds upon previous sections.

Interface rating: 5

The text is easy to navigate. All depictions and page layouts are accessible.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

No grammatical errors to note.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

This text makes a strong effort to offer inclusive materials relevant to a diverse student audience.

Reviewed by Meredith Clark-Wiltz, Professor and Hon. Roger D. Branigin Chair, Franklin College on 1/23/24

In just over 100 or so pages, this brief textbook offers a solid introduction to the field of women, gender, and sexuality studies in a format that is accessible to undergraduate students. Primarily featuring the work of sociologists, it provides... read more

In just over 100 or so pages, this brief textbook offers a solid introduction to the field of women, gender, and sexuality studies in a format that is accessible to undergraduate students. Primarily featuring the work of sociologists, it provides clear and accessible explanations to central concepts, terms, and frameworks that are used across multiple disciplines. The text, subdivided into five units, focuses on foundational concepts (social constructionism, intersectionality, etc.); constructed categories of identity and their social meaning; institutions and culture; labor and the economy; and social movements--past and present. It is a good introduction, but it will allows for substantial supplementation with other readings and materials.

The text provides accurate, though select, introductory information about the field of women, gender, and sexuality studies. It is increasingly difficult in current times to update materials to reflect so many of the uncertainties and policy changes related to this field of study. For instance, the text could be updated to include recent Supreme Court decisions regarding abortion access and affirmative action. However, the brevity of the text does permit for the assigning of more recent pieces that focus on the more contemporary issues relevant to the course.

As a field so closely connected to contemporary issues and society, this text provides a good option for providing students general information that can be enhanced with discussion of contemporary issues. For instance, the section on "Racialized, Gendered, and Sexualized Labor in the Global Economy," could be augmented by inclusion of new studies on the gendered impact of the pandemic on employment.

The book is clearly written and includes short videos and pictures which make it more engaging. Terms and concepts are defined in ways that students should be able to understand.

The text provides a consistent approach to the course materials. The first two units offer primarily foundational concepts and terminology. They are followed by two units that reveal how those concepts work within various structures or settings (institutions, culture, systems). Finally, students receive a brief and general history of social movements that have advanced feminist or other relevant causes.

The book is well-organized. The availability of both online and downloaded versions of the text increase access for students. Including page numbers in the table of contents and removing links connected to unit headings that do not lead to additional information would help with navigation.

While I assigned the history of the text before I assigned the units on institutions and on the economy, it makes sense that others might prefer the existing order. The structure allows for assignment of units in any order or interspersed with other materials and readings.

The book's interface was easy to navigate. The videos and images appeared as they should. The only minor item would be removing links to unit headings that only lead to another page containing that unit heading. It really doesn't pose an issue to student access or understanding.

The book did not contain grammatical or typographical errors in a way that was noticeable or impeded student understanding. Overall, the textbook provided clear introduction to the field of women, gender, and sexuality studies.

This book includes a diversity of women's lived experiences and provides framing feminist concepts such as intersectionality. It strives to have students consider privilege, systems of oppression, and diversity of experience.

Reviewed by Sydney Hart, Professor, City Colleges of Chicago on 5/27/22

This short text (135 pages) can easily be paired with a reader or selected articles and videos. The authors acknowledge that it is an introduction which briefly covers most of the topics and concepts typically taught in a WGSS course. The authors... read more

This short text (135 pages) can easily be paired with a reader or selected articles and videos. The authors acknowledge that it is an introduction which briefly covers most of the topics and concepts typically taught in a WGSS course. The authors are sociologists and the book maintains a sociological perspective throughout, making it ideal for an interdisciplinary (WGSS) course or a disciplinary (sociology) course. It is missing a few ideas that I would have liked, for example West and Zimmerman's "Doing Gender" which was a foundational article in the discipline, a discussion of the "Other," Collins' notion of "controlling images," and Hoschchild's "second shift." A brief survey of the three main sociological theories (Conflict, Structural Functionalism, and Symbolic Interactionism) would have been helpful for a sociology course but distracting for a WGSS course; it does do a great job with essential sociological terms. I would have also like to have seen a little more emphasis on the historical constructions of gender and sexuality and a little more on queer theory. I was thrilled, however, to see many concepts like multiple masculinities included. Finally, the text is fully intersectional along the lines of race, gender, sexuality, social/economic class, and ability/disability.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

The text is highly accurate and more up-to-date than I expected given it was published in 2017. It takes a broad approach yet still manages to include some nuanced discussion of critical ideas. I was also very happy with the depth and breadth of authors included.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

A lot has happened in the world of WGSS, sociology of sex and gender, and the world since this book was written, including the probable and devastating loss of Roe v. Wade. Policy changes have affected many areas of life, but are easily brought in with outside readings or lecture. Additional identity-describing vocabulary has been coined, but why we need this vocabulary is carefully explained in the text. The text includes foundational concepts that allow instructors to frame more current changes. I was happily surprised by the currency of this 5-year old (as of this writing) text.

Like many textbooks that are charged with covering a breadth of material in a short space, this one sometimes reads like a glorified dictionary. It is clear and, with the possible exception of the two different ways of describing "structure" and "social structure," I think my community college students will find it highly accessible.

This book maintains a sociological framework and an intersectional focus in all of its five units. The tone and style are consistent throughout the text, making it easy and accessible to read.

The text has five short units ranging from 16-26 pages each. The brevity of the text provides ample opportunity for instructors to assign additional reading/video materials for discussion and to devote class time to learning activities, bringing in current events, expanding and renewing concepts, and adding ideas, information, and new ways of understanding. The brevity may present a challenge to professors who focus their teaching only on text-supported lecture.

The five units flow easily and logically from grounding the student in the discipline, to deconstructing hegemonic (binary) ideas about gender and sexuality, to examining inequalities overall, in specific institutions, and in a more fully realized focus on work. Ending the text on the history of feminist social movements allows the book to leave students with a sense of hope.

Interface rating: 3

The online version was perfect, but lacked page numbers. The pdf included page numbers, but some of the charts were not as easy to read. The video links were fine in both versions.

I did not notice any grammatical errors, although I was not reading to proofread.

Representation can always be improved but this text does an excellent job of being inclusive in its examples and in its citations.

There are benefits and drawbacks to a very short text. Be prepared to supplement.

Reviewed by April Terry, Associate Professor, Fort Hays State University on 12/8/21

The text covers an array of issues related to women, gender, and sexuality. I appreciate a focus on the criminalization of women throughout different political movements (e.g., War on Drugs) as well as global national and global issues. I believe... read more

The text covers an array of issues related to women, gender, and sexuality. I appreciate a focus on the criminalization of women throughout different political movements (e.g., War on Drugs) as well as global national and global issues. I believe to further understand women, gender, and sexuality, the text could include a focus on place/space; specifically, the text could be more comprehensive with information pertaining to women, gender, and viewpoints on sexuality in rural areas--further dissecting differences based on geography.

I did not uncover any information that seemed inaccurate or biased. The text accurately portrayed the research from a historical through modern perspective.

I believe the text does a nice job of providing a foundation, or starting point, for many of the topic areas. Stated another way, I view this text as a source that can start a class conversation but not provide students the opportunity to delve more deeply into the content. I perceive this as a strength and area for improvement--the strength being the information provided is brief and relevant which will result in a longer "shelf-life" but also not detailed enough to provide a 16-week semester course full of discussion.

The text is easy to follow and navigate. The wording is written appropriately for an undergraduate student.

The text retains a consistent tone and framework throughout each of the five units. The contributors provide terminology in bold, consistently, and maintain a a similar framework throughout each of the units.

I believe this is a major strength of the text. The units are easy to read and locate. Key terms and points are clearly identified and each unit has an obvious beginning and end with references provided after each unit (for additional assigned readings).

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

While I do believe the organization makes sense, unit 4 is specific to gender and work in a global economy whereas the rest of the text speaks about women, gender, and sexuality from a broader context. Perhaps this unit would make more sense at the end of the text as more of a "special issue/topic" within the theme of the text. As a standalone unit, it seems specific given the nature of the text and possible use of the text.

The text provides mostly images outside of the provided text. Images are clear and easy to see with references to accompany each. I do wonder about accessibility issues and individuals who may rely on screen readers to interpret the text and images.

I did not uncover any grammatical errors.

The text provides a unit with a focus on culture, specifically. In addition to this unit, culture is noted in many other units as a byproduct of the topic itself--it would be difficult to speak about gender norms without referencing culture, for example.

I appreciate this text for use as a conversation-starter but feel it is short in nature and would require supplemental readings as well. If contributors were interested, I think this text could benefit from additional sub-topics related to women, gender, and sexuality.

Reviewed by Emily Westkaemper, Associate Professor, James Madison University on 8/22/21

This text’s emphasis on intersectionality helps make it comprehensive. Although focused over all on U.S. examples, the text refers to global contexts and examples as well. The text draws from multiple disciplines. Rather than isolating terms in a... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

This text’s emphasis on intersectionality helps make it comprehensive. Although focused over all on U.S. examples, the text refers to global contexts and examples as well. The text draws from multiple disciplines. Rather than isolating terms in a glossary, this textbook provides narrative definitions, with much of the text focused on explaining terms. I think this would be an especially useful format for online learning and for students who will be using e-books. There is not an index, but the unit subheading titles function to help locate topics, and the search tool in the e-book can help with locating topics. Some of the examples brought up to illustrate terms are covered with very brief descriptions, and introductory-level students might not understand the context behind these examples without doing further research.

This text presents its information accurately.

This text’s explanation that terminology and practices are contested and evolve (such as in the Identity Terms section) is an important point. Readers could consider how scholarly approaches can change over time and can vary based on context. Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies is a field in which new theories, methodological developments, and information can emerge quickly. The structure of providing definitions of core concepts while acknowledging that approaches can vary is a useful one that could make the text relevant over a long period of time. It’s possible that new terms and frameworks will become important in the field, and instructors could ask students to think about how recent events and recent scholarship are relevant to the material in the textbook. Drafting new material to supplement this text could be an assignment.

I found the writing very clear and think it would be readable for introductory students. This clarity in descriptions of theory and terms is very useful.

Consistency rating: 4

The text is coherent. I thought it could be beneficial to have some further explanation of the logic behind the topic organization and order. This could help provide further insight on the underlying frameworks. Some of the examples presented as sidebars are shorter and structured differently than others.

Modularity rating: 4

The length of text for each section of the e-book is a good length that does not seem too long for reading online. Some of the practices for referencing other sections of the text (referring to a page number where the topic was previously covered) aren’t directly relevant for reading in the e-book format, where page numbers aren’t visible. However, the search function can help with locating the topics.

If an instructor wanted to assign components of the text in a different order than they appear, the syllabus would likely need to include links to each section as well as to the section of references at the end of each unit. I thought it could have been useful for references to appear directly on each unit subsection.

The table of contents and search function make topics easy to locate, but it could be beneficial to have some further explanation of the logic behind the topic organization and selection of topics for the units. I think the decisions to begin the text with a section on theoretical frameworks and to end the text with a section on activism were sound.

The arrow icons used to advance through successive sections are consistent throughout the text, making it easy to page through the sections. It is useful that the contents menu and the search bar remain in place in the banner at the top of each e-book section. Some readers would likely appreciate the opportunity provided to save the full text as a pdf.

The writing and grammar are successful.

This text applies an intersectional approach and includes diverse examples. The examples draw heavily from the U.S. context, and many other textbooks in the field have that same emphasis. It could be useful to include more examples from outside the U.S.

Further explanation would be useful in some parts of the textbook narrative. For example, in the 19th Century Feminist Movements section of Unit V, there is some summary of a subject analyzed in recent scholarship on the history of gender: evidence that white activists deployed stereotypes and distorted a Sojourner Truth speech in publicizing a printed version of the text. While this textbook explains that “white suffragists dramatically changed [the speech’s] content and title,” some further explanation would be useful to clarify for readers who have not studied this subject what the nature of those changes were and what they suggest about histories of biases, privileges, and oppressions. In the brief explanation provided, a reader might not understand this overarching significance. While brevity of the textbook could be positive for many instructors who will want to combine this text with more detailed, full essays and primary sources, it would be useful to have more explanation of some of the examples that are included. The “Social Construction of Heterosexuality” section is a sidebar that, comparatively, includes further detail in the form of historical context, but I thought that some brief additional explanation of James Kiernan’s career and positionality would help.

To encourage readers to seek further information, it could also be useful to provide more references within the text. In the “Theorizing Lived Experiences” section of Unit I there is a sidebar about maquiladoras to illustrate “How Macro Structures Impact People.” The explanations given for this example could provide an opportunity for readers to do some of their own analysis; however, no sources are provided, and the references listed at the end of the unit don’t give a clear indication of where the information on that topic could be found. Similarly, in the description of the “one-drop rule” as an example of social constructionism, providing more citations could help students understand the topic and help them conduct further research.

The brevity of this text could be beneficial in many instructional settings when a professor has additional readings to go in depth on topics; but the structure of this text doesn’t provide clear indication to readers, for some of the topics, of sources that would be most beneficial for further research.

If an instructor wanted students to read basic definitions of terms on a particular topic, this is a text that could be easily excerpted: there would not be a need for students to read whole units or the whole book in order to understand individual pages/ subsections, and this could be very useful for many courses. The topics covered in this text could become the basis for further research and analysis by students, giving a lot of possibilities for students to identify topics that interest them.

Reviewed by Erin Mysogland, Adjunct Lecturer, Pace University on 8/11/21

This text is excellent for an entry level course in women and gender studies. Unit I clearly and succinctly lays out key terms and theories. Terms continue to be defined throughout the text and are bolded for accessibility. If anything, the... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

This text is excellent for an entry level course in women and gender studies. Unit I clearly and succinctly lays out key terms and theories. Terms continue to be defined throughout the text and are bolded for accessibility. If anything, the text is a bit heavy on definitions and could have included more in-depth case studies to support readers in applying the terms. That being said, additional resources could easily supplement where real life examples are lacking. Terms and theories are defined in such a way that would be inviting to both first-year students as well as students with more experience in the field. For instance, the discussion of the terms “disabled people” vs. “people with disabilities” can show students how terminology is not stagnant and is informed by lived experiences. The text’s discussion of “assemblage” could similarly allow for nuanced conversations about the benefits and shortcomings of the framework of intersectionality.

The content reflects up to date research and although it draws most heavily on sociology, it takes an interdisciplinary approach to define identity terms and apply them to social institutions, power structures, and feminist movements. References are included after every unit.

The text not only reflects recent research but offers references to popular culture that make the text inviting. Videos and other embedded external resources serve to support the presentation of this content in a contemporary manner. However, the clear explanations provided with all theory and cultural references will allow the text to be relevant for years to come.

The text is easy to follow and is free from unnecessary jargon. All terms are well defined and are accessible across different levels of familiarity with the field.

The text is consistent in its use of intersectionality as a framework. The text introduces and applies the work of feminist scholars throughout, allowing for a consistent exploration and application of intersectional feminist scholarship and praxis.

Clear organization and consistent use of well-defined key terminology allows the text to be read in its entirety or in smaller segments. While the text flows from one section to the next, progressing from definitions to analysis of institutions and social movements, sections can easily stand on their own.

The text progresses logically, beginning with definitions and ending with a historical analysis of feminist movements that applies many key ideas from the text. A brief conclusion at the end of the text may have aided readers in reviewing main ideas, but the text remains strong because of the clarity and organization throughout.

Interface rating: 4

The text is easy to navigate digitally and the imbedded images, videos, and links all function. While some images serve to enhance the text, others do not add to the written content. For instance, the image of convict leasing included in the section on the prison system introduced a complex practice without providing the necessary context in the text. Nevertheless, the text’s interface is free from issues that may challenge reader’s comprehension.

I did not identify any grammatical errors.

By adopting an intersectional lens from the start the text is able to model inclusivity and cultural sensitivity. In fact, it serves as a model for accessible intersectional scholarship. That being said, the text draws heavily on the US context. At times the US focus serves to limit the presentation of key ideas. For instance, the section that chronicles the social construction of race did not offer a recognition of the role that European colonialism and global capitalism played in constructing ideas including scientific racism and ideas about black pathology, as described in the text. There are bright spots in the text’s international analysis, including a multilevel analysis of maquiladoras along the US-Mexico border. Used in conjunction with external resources that adopt more of an international focus, these instances of international analysis present in the text are certainly adequate for introducing students to global applications of theory from the field of women and gender studies.

Reviewed by Jennifer Miller, Lecturer, University of Texas at Arlington on 12/13/20

The book is quite comprehension, but it lacks depth and case studies to help students understand the significance of and context for terms introduced. It needs to be supplemented with more detailed work on ideas introduced. It does what it does... read more

The book is quite comprehension, but it lacks depth and case studies to help students understand the significance of and context for terms introduced. It needs to be supplemented with more detailed work on ideas introduced. It does what it does very well, but instructors should expect to use this text as a foundation they must build on to give students a comprehensive introduction to the field.

Definitions are accurate and accessible. They provide an essential vocabulary for thinking about and discussing gender and sexuality.

The textbook introduces students to key words and ideas that may be expanded on and changed in the future, but will remain a necessary component of any introductory course in the field.

The text is well written with accessible prose.

The text is written and formatted consistently to help readers follow the material presented.

The text can be used flexibly to meet the needs of different courses and course designs. I also see this used in introductory sociology courses, perhaps even introductory literature courses; although not in its entirety. The text does a very good job introducing key ideas that can be used to shape conversations.

Key words and ideas are clustered in a logical format that will allow instructors to pair excerpts with more in depth studies and/or cultural texts to elucidate context and significance.

I found the text easy to navigate. Links to outside sources seem to work and add interest. They can be assigned for homework or introduced in class to prompt discussion.

I didn't identify any grammatical issues.

The text is inclusive of racial and ethnic differences. Multiple gender and sexual identities are identified and discussed accurately. Disability terminology is also introduced.

I think this is a significant resource for instructors teaching introductory gender and sexuality studies courses. It will also be useful for those teaching sociology, literature, and other cultural texts.

Reviewed by Francesca Calamita, Assistant Professor, University of Virginia on 11/28/20

For an intro level, this is an ideal book, however it requires other materials to be added for the class. It is good also if you teach a class for two depts, such as a cross-listed course, with easy and quick explanations students who are not... read more

For an intro level, this is an ideal book, however it requires other materials to be added for the class. It is good also if you teach a class for two depts, such as a cross-listed course, with easy and quick explanations students who are not majoring/minoring in WGS might need to consult.

I did not find any errors. I would therefore say it is very accurate and relevant.

Some basic ideas will be considered at the base of the discipline also in the future, yet updates will become necessary with time,

Clear, immediate and easy to read.

It is very consistent too.

It is easy to follow. It depends on how you will organise your course, you might need to go back and forward but in general it is well organised and the material is easy to find.

Well organised and easy to consult.

I didn't come across any particular issues.

Great, I did not find any mistakes.

It is a good starting point for basic WGS topics, yet strongly anchored in the US-context, so it might benefits from transnational references in the future.

I think I will use it this spring to help students in a cross-listed class to review some basic topics. We might suggest some transnational references.

Reviewed by Erin Boyce, Full Time Faculty, Metropolitan State University of Denver on 8/9/20

This book covers a lot of information, minimally. This is sufficient because it is an introduction book and gives students a good base and framework and has been relatively easy to supplement with some more in depth resources. read more

This book covers a lot of information, minimally. This is sufficient because it is an introduction book and gives students a good base and framework and has been relatively easy to supplement with some more in depth resources.

I have not come across any information that I feel is inaccurate or misrepresented. It is a book related to Women and Gender issues, to it is difficult to say it is unbiased; however, I think this is expected and reasonable based on the content.

The course this book is being used for had not used a text book previously, this introductory text is current, easily readable, and could be easily updated with more relevant external resources as time moves on.

Clarity rating: 4

The book is very straightforward; however, in it's effort to be succinct and to the point, some context can be lost. It requires a strong course agenda to supplement the chapters with more in depth readings.

This book is clear in its intention from beginnnig to end.

This book is divided up well. I jumped around in how it's implemented in my course and didn't use it from start to finish, but met the needs of each module it was applicable to.

As noted before, the organization was different than the course was designed, but each chapter does stand alone making it easy to reorganize to meet the course agenda.

No issues, all links and external resources were working. Easy to open, access, and search for content.

None that I observed.

This book takes an intersectional perspective that is very inclusive of many races, ethnicities, and gender backgrounds.

I am excited to implement this Fall in my classes and look forward to getting feedback from my students on their thoughts on how it affected thier learning.

Reviewed by Mikkilynn Olmsted, Senior Lecturer, Metropolitan State University of Denver on 7/24/20

Units I and II are comprehensive yet easy-to-follow glossary-heavy chapters on gender and women's studies. I especially like the multimedia examples. The latter chapters, most especially Unit III and Unit IV, are less comprehensive. The... read more

Units I and II are comprehensive yet easy-to-follow glossary-heavy chapters on gender and women's studies. I especially like the multimedia examples. The latter chapters, most especially Unit III and Unit IV, are less comprehensive. The presentation on gendered and interpersonal violence was based on outdated research, even for the e-book's 2017 publication date. Supplemental materials would be needed to cover the more specific subsections presented in Unit IV's survey of "gender and the economy."

On the whole, this publication offers insightful interpretations of gender studies. Students will benefit from the intersectional, multiple-perspectives presented in each unit as that represents today's academic field and today's social justice movements. The presentation on, interpersonal violence, gender assault, and rape survivors within the US criminal justice systems needs updating.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 3

The world has changed quite a bit since 2017; yet, I would feel confident in assigning all of Units I and II and sections of the other units along with supplemental materials that discuss gender studies and social justice movements in 2020. There appears an unusual emphasis on the George Bush administration, which dates the materials.

The beginning of the e-book employs introductory language and vocabulary easy for students to understand and memorize. With each unit, the amount of academic discourse increases. The last unit presents most similarly to an upper-level academic seminar paper. This gradual increase in complexity may fit nicely with a gradual increase in rigor over a semester.

The terminology fits the field, although I would have liked to see additional terms such as Black Lives Matter and sex trafficking.

Unit III and Unit IV could be their own publications. The number of topics covered in these two units results in superficial summary for some and in near misrepresentation for others. I would prefer emphasis on smaller chapters for each of the subjects or expanding the whole e-book to more fully present these subjects.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 3

Introducing key vocabulary and theory makes sense for Units I and II. Unit V, a historical review of feminism, appears too late. There are multiple reminder references to the previous units, in fact, which would be unnecessary if history was presented earlier.

There are no navigational or interface issues.

I saw no grammar errors of note.

This is a grand plus of this publication - it is intersectional and post-colonial. Several transnational feminist scholars' ideas appear in the latter units.

This is a solid resource to cover the basic components of gender studies and the history of feminism. I would recommend assigning it as required reading during the early days of an introductory women's and gender studies course.

Reviewed by Charlotte Haller, Professor, Worcester State University on 6/29/20

The book is definitely geared to an introductory level. Each chapter is very, very short (as in a page or so). The number of topics covered work well for an introductory class, though, and the shortness is a benefit for faculty who want to... read more

The book is definitely geared to an introductory level. Each chapter is very, very short (as in a page or so). The number of topics covered work well for an introductory class, though, and the shortness is a benefit for faculty who want to incorporate a range of other kinds of readings. The textbook alone would not provide sufficient material to teach a class (which is good, in my opinion, because we shouldn't rely on textbooks like that).

There were no errors that I detected in the textbook. The material is presented in an appropriate, matter-of-fact way.

Because this textbook has an "Attribution" license ("This license lets others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials."), I am planning in future courses to have students add to and adapt the textbook to reflect their current concerns and understandings. There were a couple of places in the textbook where I found the use of a particular sociological jargon (for instance, SNAF - Standard North American Family) to be jarring and giving a sense of a common use of a term that isn't commonly used. In the future, I might just delete that reference so that students can focus on the many helpful definitions and commonly-used terms in WGSS.

This is a real strength of the textbook. I really appreciate how the authors really slow down and explain unfamiliar terms or concepts clearly and concisely. This is a textbook that is clearly grounded in the teaching of Introduction to Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and is presented in a way that is understandable and useful for undergraduates without a lot of background in the subject.

The organization is very clear and well-organized. The terms used are consistent.

Each section is very short and could be easily reorganized to reflect the course structure. In fact, faculty used to a more conventional textbook, where chapters build on one another and there is an effort at narrative continuity might find this textbook overly choppy, but that is clearly the intention as it allows the textbook to be chopped up and re-ordered relatively easily.

Given the short chapters, and the clear subheadings and framework, this is a textbook that is very easy to navigate and understand the general flow and organization.

The online reading interface is a little clunky, but once you get used to it, it's fine. Because of the modularity, sometimes when you click from the drop-down menu to a new section, the page will be blank, but you need to click an arrow at the bottom left to get to the next page that has text. The online version has hyperlinks, which consistently worked well.

I did not see any grammatical errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

This is a U.S.-centric text, though there are some attempts at broader global contextualization. Widening the lens could be great project either for students or a faculty member using this text as a launching-off point.

I used this text in an Intro to WGSS class before I fully understood OER resources. I found it to be, as expected, a helpful textbook that got students oriented to concepts that we then covered more in depth in class. Now that I have participated in an (excellent) training on OER, I better understand how valuable this kind of textbook is, have a great appreciation for the chosen format, and am excited in the future to use it to support not just free textbooks for students, but actual open pedagogy and engagement with students to create a textbook that works for them and reflects them.

Reviewed by Nishant Upadhyay, Assistant Professor, University of Colorado Boulder on 6/11/20

This is by far the most comprehensive intro to WGS text I have seen. Most texts are outdated and rely on older feminist writings with very little contemporary content. I like the way themes are introduced and organized - would work quite well for... read more

This is by far the most comprehensive intro to WGS text I have seen. Most texts are outdated and rely on older feminist writings with very little contemporary content. I like the way themes are introduced and organized - would work quite well for intro classes. Key words and concepts are well-defined and would be accessible to most students. As an intro text, it does a good job of introducing key sites of feminist engagement and critiques - from the family to state to medical complex to prison industrial complex to sweatshops. It exposes students to wide range of conversations. Many of these conversations will have to complimented with other external sources, but the text provides a key foundation. The text is intersectional from the first section itself, unlike the last text I used where intersectionality came on page 465. However, I would suggest naming black feminists and feminisms right when intersectionality is introduced first. As the authors note, the text heavily lies on sociology. Given how interdisciplinary WGS is, I think it does need more interdisciplinary content.

Overall the content is accurate. I like the use of videos, and suggest more videos as we go further along in the text. More examples are needed, but perhaps they can be added as supplementary materials by the instructors.

Unlike most intro to WGS texts, this text brings in trans and disability as key analytics and seeks to be as updated as possible with language and terminology. This is highly commendable. Disability Studies and Trans Studies are rapidly changing and re-defining Gender and Feminist Studies, and most conventional text books have failed to keep up with the interventions made by these fields. More importantly, both fields are engaged as foundational to WGS not as an after-thought.

For a text with limited number of pages, it's impressive that it remains so clear and sharp throughout. The authors introduce very complex ideas in accessible ways - probably the biggest highlight of the book. The text introduce terms like postcolonial, decoloniality, and homonationalism, which is quite remarkable. I assume these terms may still be very difficult for students but I appreciate that they are introduced in the text.

The framework and format is very consistent, which makes the text more accessible and easy to navigate.

This is one of the strongest aspects of the text. It's neatly organized and easy to navigate. Different chapters can be assigned on their own without the need to use the entire text.

I am impressed by the organization and flow of the text. The text engages with many complicated ideas yet its easy to access and navigate.

I liked the options of engaging with the text on multiple platforms. They are easy to switch and allows for a smooth reading and viewing.

Well-edited throughout.

Cultural Relevance rating: 3

While the text is not necessarily insensitive or offensive, it is very specific to the US context with very limited engagement with the global south (even though it does focus on the global south). It does a good job in centering African American/Black feminisms - which is much much needed in most WGS textbooks. However, there is no engagement with Indigenous feminists and questions of settler colonialism and Indigenous decolonization. Furthermore, experiences and works of other women of color and immigrant women, specifically Chicana and Muslim women, are glaringly absent from the text. More generally, colonialism and imperialism needs to be centered more. Lastly, points around Brazilians not being considered Latinx in the US and experiences of Black folks in Brazil is not contextualized thoroughly and needs more complex engagement.

Reviewed by Kristi Fondren, Professor and Chair, Marshall University on 4/17/20

The text appears to cover necessary content for an introductory level course in women, gender, and sexuality studies. Key terms are embedded within the chapters and in bold font which makes them easily identifiable for the reader. Examples are... read more

The text appears to cover necessary content for an introductory level course in women, gender, and sexuality studies. Key terms are embedded within the chapters and in bold font which makes them easily identifiable for the reader. Examples are then provided. The text begins with key terms and perspectives before moving on to inclusion and intersectionality and pluralities regarding identity, the impact of institutions and structures on identity, work and the economy - in the U.S. and abroad, and ends with historical and more recent social movements.

The content of the text appears to be accurate in terms of its content and coverage of material. I did not notice any content errors upon my first reading. Text is unbiased and inclusive in its coverage of content and identities.

Given that it's been a few years since I've taught our sex and gender course, I appreciate that the text is up-to-date, particularly recognizing multiple gender identities and pluralities compared to older versions of similar textbooks. As society continues to transform, the text, as written, appears to be set up in a way that would be easy to update.

The tone of the text is scholarly, with references cited and provided, yet accessible to an audience outside of academia. Students will appreciate how succinct and straightforward the chapters are written.

The text is easy to navigate. Chapters are organized in the same manner (i.e., key terms in bold font, full references at the end) which will make it friendly to use. The text does not jump all over the place which is nice. The textbook as a whole is organized in a way that makes sense, beginning with key terms and perspectives, moving to identities and institutions, and ending with social movements.

I appreciate how the text is written in such a way that it is direct and to the point. Key terms are defined and supported with examples. There are visuals for each reading and in nearly all, if not all, chapters a video component. Text could be used in the order that the material is presented or it allows itself to be used as supplemental material to other readings.

The textbook is will organized. Material is presented in a logical, clear fashion. If anything, I initially thought it odd the work and the economy had its own chapter; however, since nearly everyone has experience with this institution, I do find the chapter appropriate for the text.

I had no problems with navigation and found the pdf version to be very easy to navigate. Images and charts were clear as were the video components, though one was initially unavailable. However, I was able to access it at a later time.

I did not notice any grammatical errors. Text is well-written.

I found the text to be inclusive of not only gender identities and pluralities, but inclusive when it comes to discussing race, ethnicity, and cultural backgrounds.

I plan to use this book as a supplement to research monographs. I find that non-majors who take our upper level sex and gender class could benefit from a textbook that provides key terminology. Our majors generally do not need something like that; however, this text would be a good resource for them as well. I would recommend it, but not require it. Since it's easily accessible to them, I imagine all would appreciate having this text as a point of reference.

Reviewed by Christiana Paradis, Adjunct Professor, Susquehanna University on 3/20/20

I thought that this is a good introduction to a textbook, but it would be helpful if it was a bit more comprehensive. There is no mention of the fourth "wave" of feminism, nor the impacts on the labor rights movement and anti-lynching movements... read more

I thought that this is a good introduction to a textbook, but it would be helpful if it was a bit more comprehensive. There is no mention of the fourth "wave" of feminism, nor the impacts on the labor rights movement and anti-lynching movements that directly impacted the first and second waves. I thought each of the topics introduced in the third section was helpful, but not as comprehensive as they could be. You would need to assign a variety of supplemental readings in addition to this text to meet your benchmarks for this course.

Overall the information provided was concise and accurate.

I think the text is definitely relevant and content is mostly up to date, but there are sections that could be more up to date in regards to changing legislation under our current presidential leadership and ever evolving understanding of gender and sexuality issues within the LGBTQ+ community.

Text was clear and straight forward.

Consistent section to section in terms of language. The beginning of the text had more opportunity for video links and hyperlinks which seem to taper off as the text moves forward.

It would be very easy to assign pieces of text from this book.

The topics seem slightly out of order to me. The first and second sections are perfectly in line, but the change to focusing on the workplace and other feminist issues and then circling back to feminist history seems a bit awkward. If I was assigning readings from the text I would assign section I, II, IV, and III.

Several charts are distorted. Some of the image choices seem very odd to me. I loved the beginning of the text where it was broken up via recommended videos, I would prefer that remain throughout rather than transition to photos that didn't always coincide with context of the text.

Text was well written.

The text wasn't culturally insensitive, but I felt that some of the image choices could have been more appropriate and culturally relevant.

If I can find all my supplemental readings online I would consider switching to this open text, but would like to see it expanded and organized a bit better.

Reviewed by Sarah Hastings, Professor, Radford University on 1/31/20

This text addresses the majority of topic areas covered in an introductory course in Women's and Gender Studies. Key words and concepts were clearly identified in bold font. Headings were mostly descriptive. At times, I wasn't sure what content... read more

This text addresses the majority of topic areas covered in an introductory course in Women's and Gender Studies. Key words and concepts were clearly identified in bold font. Headings were mostly descriptive. At times, I wasn't sure what content might follow a particular heading, but all content was ultimately found to be relevant and easily comprehensible. Embedded videos will be appreciated by students. The units largely aligned with other texts I have used in class and covered the main overarching topics including social structures and institutions, matrices of power, work, gender roles, women's bodies, health, and historical movements.

Material seemed accurate throughout. Chapters were objectively written. Language was inclusive and free of bias. I saw nothing that prompted me to question whether information was accurately reported or represented. A reference section follows each of the five units, and citations are included throughout the text.

Content was up to date. The discipline is one in which rapid social change impacts the material covered year to year. Terms become outdated, new court decisions come down, and current events impact how we approach content in the classroom. I have used several printed texts for an introductory Women's & Gender Studies course that seemed out of date in sections. An advantage of an electronic text (that I had not fully considered before) is the ability to update rather easily, rather than having to wait for a new edition to be printed.

This was a particular area of strength for this text. The language was exceptionally straightforward, and as noted above, bolded font helps the reader identify key concepts and flag ideas for further study. The section dealing with third wave and queer feminist movements was particularly clear in comparison with other texts I have used. Likewise, the section titled Racialized, Gendered, and Sexualized labor in the Global Economy, did a good job of explaining ideas that can be difficult for undergraduate students to grasp. This section was brief--possibly too brief--but it offered the basics that instructors can use as a springboard to link with other resources.

The book was consistent throughout. Ideas built upon one another. Unit I serves as a sound introduction to the remaining units and offers a "view at 30,000 feet" to help the reader prepare to view the terrain below in closer detail. No inconsistencies were noted in terms of the information provided or the ideas discussed.

Reading sections are short and can be completed in one sitting. When reading the text online, the menu on the left hand side of the screen is easily navigable. In online format, there are no page numbers, so instructors may need to rely on headings to direct students to assigned passages. The downloadable pdf version of the text does have page numbers, and the videos are easily accessible, though watching them is not as streamlined as when reading the book online. Switching back and forth between the two formats was not difficult especially with two screens.

The book is organized in a manner similar to other women's and gender studies texts I have used. The book lends itself well to asynchronous or hybrid courses that are often organized by modules, and would easily map onto a five module online format. Intuitively, one might expect to find the section on historical movements first rather than last, but my experience is that most textbooks in the discipline structure material placing historical information last. Once students are introduced to key topics in the field and invited to consider the impact of social structures and systems of power on women's lives, then they are more equipped to look at social movements and individual figures who responded to the forces in their particular historical context.

Embedded videos are engaging and images are clear and colorful. Pages are formatted well throughout. The book can be downloaded or read online.

No grammatical errors were noted. The text flowed well. Sentence structure was engaging. Content was easily gleaned in read-through.

The text used inclusive language throughout. Images and examples used helped the book avoid relying exclusively on a Eurocentric perspective. No offensive or culturally insensitive language was noted.

I am planning to use this book in my class next fall. I will supplement with additional material, particularly writings by women that reflect their lived experiences. However, I was pleased this book offers a solid foundation that will help ground students in the key concepts that sometimes get lost in lengthier texts.

Reviewed by Karen Scarpella, Part-time faculty, Aims Community College on 7/29/19

This textbook is designed to be a simple and structured outline for a course. It is “comprehensive” in that it covers many of the standard topics. The depth of each section is superficial. The benefit of this is that it is a nice outline to add... read more

This textbook is designed to be a simple and structured outline for a course. It is “comprehensive” in that it covers many of the standard topics. The depth of each section is superficial. The benefit of this is that it is a nice outline to add additional materials as each instructor prefers.

Terms are presented in bold with an accessible explanation and definition. However, there is not a glossary or index. The table of contents provides an outline of subjects covered.

Content Accuracy rating: 3

Content accuracy appears to be acceptable. However, an unbiased and conservative counter-view is not presented. For example, the section on transgender does not present the argument that this is not believed to be legitimate by some.

Content is presented in a way that will easily be updated as information changes over time.

Possibly the most positive critique is that this text is written in clear, concise, and accessible language for undergraduate students reading this kind of material for the first time.

There is no evidence that this was written by multiple authors. The tenor and voice remain consistent throughout.

The textbook and its sections are divided into smaller subunits that appear to be easily consumed without intimidating lengths for undergrad students. The sections would seem to be flexible and able to be moved around to suit individual instructors and course objectives.

The textbook is organized in a similar fashion to other contemporary Introduction to Women’s Studies textbooks. However, it continues to pose the issue that students may grow impatient while waiting to get to Women’s historical challenges and accomplishments.

The textbook seems easily used and has unbroken links in the online version. The section forwarding is located at the bottom of the page and initially difficult to see.

The text contains no grammatical errors.

The text is not culturally insensitive or offensive in any way. They did a nice job of integrating and highlighting the experiences and impact of black women in our history. However, the book could be further improved by including more examples and history of other marginalized groups.

Reviewed by Kirsten Olsen, Sociology Instructor, Anoka-Ramsey Community College on 6/28/19

Assuming that an instructor is looking for a basic introductory book, this book will likely work quite well. It briefly introduces many concepts in an accessible way but does not provide much depth or detail. So many textbooks are too in-depth... read more

Assuming that an instructor is looking for a basic introductory book, this book will likely work quite well. It briefly introduces many concepts in an accessible way but does not provide much depth or detail. So many textbooks are too in-depth for a 1000-level course, and this might fill a niche for instructors looking for a very basic introductory book so that they can tailor the course (additional readings, activities, assignments, etc.) to their specific course objectives. I think it would be difficult to use this book if you are new to teaching and do not have the background knowledge or resources to supplement it effectively. However, this book would like likely work for seasoned professors who have been teaching gender studies for quite some time. As a sociologist, I wish there was a bit more sociological theory in the textbook, but then the audience would likely be too narrow. I also wish the book would have included the educational system as a social institution and incorporated Title IX and sex education as topics. There is no glossary, no index, and no list key terms at the end of each unit, all of which I think are helpful for first year students.

My only concern is that some students may see the Huffington Post citations, immediately dismiss the course content, and stop learning. On the other hand, there are many topics in gender and sexuality courses that challenge students, so this may not be much of an issue in the grand scheme of things.

Material seems to be quite up-to-date and easy to change in future editions. I recommend adding gender non-conforming, matrix of domination, and femininities to the next version.

The text is written at an appropriate level for first year college students who do not have a background in sociology or gender and sexuality studies.

Like many introductory textbooks, this textbook effectively incorporates key terms by bolding them. However, there is a lack of consistency in how clear the definitions are. Sometimes the definitions are very clear, whereas the meanings of some key terms were more subtly integrated into the text. I assume this would be frustrating for students.

The text is broken up into sections that are so small that it will almost surely keep students’ attention. On the flip side, such short sections can make the textbook seem choppy, especially if you are comparing it to traditional printed textbooks.

Many textbooks only talk about feminisms at the end of the textbook. I like that this textbook briefly introduces students to feminisms in Unit I and then goes into further detail in Unit V. The main thing that I would change is to add a Unit Summary or ‘Bringing it All Together’ section at the end of each unit.

I mainly reviewed a printed copy of the text because I retain more information that way. Luckily my college will print a paper for students at very low cost. As a result, I only looked at some of the charts and links online. However, the amount of material for each section makes the online reading tolerable, and that means a lot coming from someone like me who hates reading online. If the chapters were extensive, it would be too cumbersome to read the online version. Given the brevity of the text, the online version would work fairly well.

I only noticed one error.

The book does a decent job of explaining that terminology, identities, content, and perspectives will continue to evolve. Examples are relatively diverse throughout the textbook, but the textbook could benefit from more diversity related to age and religious affiliation.

Reviewed by Stina Soderling, Instructor, Metropolitan State University of Denver on 5/7/19

As several reviewers have noted, this is not a comprehensive textbook. This, however, is not necessarily a weakness. The text provides definitions of important terms, and an introduction to some key topics and concepts. It can easily be... read more

As several reviewers have noted, this is not a comprehensive textbook. This, however, is not necessarily a weakness. The text provides definitions of important terms, and an introduction to some key topics and concepts. It can easily be supplemented with other sources in order to provide a more comprehensive introduction to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Considering that there are varying views between institutions, and even individual instructors, of what an introductory WGSS course should cover, the flexibility that a minimalist textbook, paired with other materials, offers can be a benefit rather than a flaw. Again, as other reviewers have pointed out, the sociological training of all of the authors mean that other common approaches to WGSS are not adequately represented.

Yes, the content is accurate and error-free. In the field of WGSS, “unbiased” is not necessarily the most relevant category. The text does have a feminist bias, and this is a good thing.

The content is up-to-date. Because much terminology related to gender changes rather quickly, the book will most likely need updating every few years, but this would be the case for any textbook in the field.

The language is overall clear; however, brevity of the book at times comes at the expense of clarity and accessibility. For example, the chapter “Identity Terms” aims to define terms people use to identify themselves, such as “cis-gender” or “person of color.” The descriptions are accurate, but they do not provide much context. I can imagine using this chapter as a reference guide for students, but not as a tool for teaching the meaning of these terms.

Yes, the book is consistent in its terminology and framework.

The book is divided into five units, each made up of approximately five chapters. The chapters are all short, and can be assigned for one class session, even with the addition of other materials. The units could be assigned in a different order than how the book is organized, as each unit stands on its own. Individual chapters could also be assigned in a different order.

The two first units of the book are largely devoted to defining terms and concepts. While I can see the reasons behind this – giving students a common vocabulary for the course – it creates a disembodied feeling. The book ends with a unit on feminist history, which strikes me as a better starting point, giving students some basis for why they should care about all the terminology. But, as mentioned above, the units could easily be rearranged to fit the teaching approach of any given instructor or course.

Yes, the text is free of significant interface issues. It would be helpful if the table of contents at the beginning of the text were hyperlinked.

I did not find any grammatical errors in the text.

The authors have taken care to write a text that is culturally sensitive and not offensive. The text is consistently written from an intersectional perspective.

The text contains links to several YouTube videos. While these often contain useful content, YouTube videos are not accessible in terms of closed captioning.

Reviewed by Jessica Davidson, Associate Professor, James Madison University on 3/4/19

As an Introductory text, it covers essential points such as introduction to the field and discussion of key theory, challenging binary systems and looking at difference (sex/gender/sexuality system and race and class) and institutions, culture,... read more

As an Introductory text, it covers essential points such as introduction to the field and discussion of key theory, challenging binary systems and looking at difference (sex/gender/sexuality system and race and class) and institutions, culture, and structures. Despite its position as an introductory text, the final two units have a more specialized focus: one covers gender and work in the global market and the final unit is dedicated to feminist social movements (serves as the history/narrative of 19thc., 20thc, and third wave movements). It is a bit unclear why the last two units have their unique focus- gender and work in the global market, and feminist social movements. While both topics undoubtedly are important elements of the discipline, it is not evident why they are chosen as opposed to other central themes in the field, for example, women and health or women and politics. The unit on women and the global market seems a more advanced case study of the broader concepts established effectively in the first units. It is a departure from the slower paced incremental presentation of key concepts in earlier units. There is neither an index nor a glossary. At times, the text leans towards a sociology-centric conception of the field. It is unclear what advantage this discipline-specific approach offers especially considering the fundamentally interdisciplinary nature of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies.

To the best of my ability to assess, the content is accurate and error-free.

The text seems well positioned and up-to-date with opening photos of the Black Lives Matter March and the 2017 Women’s March in DC.

The text explains potentially complicated and confusing terms in a sensible and logical way that avoids alienating readers through too much jargon. The discussion in unit 1 of “identity terms” is particularly good. It introduces many new concepts/language in a simplified and comprehensible way, i.e. “people of color,” “non-binary,” “pansexual,” and “Intersectionality.” In unit III, the ubiquitous academic term “institution” is very well defined and applicable to disciplines outside of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies.

The text consistently uses the same terms and definitions throughout the units.

The text seems to lend itself to breaking up material into shorter readings. Units have brief introduction followed by several pages of text for each section within the unit.

The text is organized into 5 larger units that contain between 4-8 chapters/sections depending on the unit and a reference section at the end of each unit. The organization seems clearly laid out and explained. Unit 2 reads a bit choppy. While terms are well defined, there is little integration of them into the next section, or into a larger narrative that is emphasized throughout the unit.

The text effectively allows the reader to navigate easily from section to section without problems.

The text is written in a consistent and smooth style without grammatical errors or unclear prose.

The text presents an unclear balance of US content and global content. It leans towards a US focus especially in the final unit on feminist movements, which only covers the history of these movements in the United States. In the Third Wave feminism section there are few references to movements outside of the US. However, within the context of the US, the unit on feminist movements is impressively inclusive. The authors present a full picture the first wave of feminist movements in the US, including discussion of white and black activists.

While it is not the intent of the textbook to include primary sources and/or excerpts from key contributors to the field, an inclusion of one or two for each until would serve to exemplify the interdisciplinary nature of the field and encourage application of terms and concepts to the relevant readings.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Losh, Associate Professor, VIVA / William and Mary on 11/25/18

The text does a serviceable job citing key terms in an introductory course (essentialism, biological determinism, androcentrism, the gender binary, compulsory heterosexuality, heteronormativity, intersectionality, cult of domesticity, male gaze,... read more

The text does a serviceable job citing key terms in an introductory course (essentialism, biological determinism, androcentrism, the gender binary, compulsory heterosexuality, heteronormativity, intersectionality, cult of domesticity, male gaze, medicalization, eugenics, first wave/second wave/third wave, identity politics, etc.)

In particular, the glossary in chapter three performs important work to help students use appropriate language, so that students are not stigmatized after the gaffe of using a prejudicial term in an introductory course. Unfortunately, given its overview approach that emphasizes keywords, this textbook often truncates any discussion about why there might be controversy in the first place. This approach may also set a didactic tone that emphasizes correctness and thus discourages challenges. In other words, this textbook could use more extended examples like its discussion of the controversy about “person-first” language, which might serve as a useful class discussion point for a dialogic exchange.

Often this textbook feels more like an outline than a textbook. Some chapters are only a paragraph in length! Other topics whiz by without adequate elaboration. For example, in chapter four the important key term of “privilege” is glossed over too rapidly. A Creative Commons image of a sign-waving protestor on Flickr highlighting the phrase “privilege is when you think something is not a problem because it is not a problem to you personally” seems too pat for such a difficult talking point for undergraduates who tend to be sensitive and fear accusations from their peers. The equally important term “ally” is not presented at all. And in chapter five the quick parallelism between gender and race used to explain the term “social constructionism” might need more explanation given complex feelings that students might have about the Rachel Dolezal case or Instagrammers who make themselves appear Black. Given how the term “appropriation” is often an important one for these discussions, its absence is also noteworthy.

More case studies, stories, or extended examples would greatly improve readability. For example, the authors’ discussion of the history of the term “heterosexual” (and its early associations with deviance and the pursuit of sexual pleasure than reproduction) is useful for de-naturalizing heterosexuality. Although the section on women’s liberation movements offers some extended examples, it is strangely selective, especially given the textbook’s commitment to offering intersectional perspectives.

As others have pointed out the text may be limited by the disciplinary expertise of its authors who are all sociologists who bring sociological perspectives but lack training comparable to the “biologists, anthropologists, sociologists, historians, chemists, engineers, economists and researchers from just about any identifiable department” lauded in the introduction. Thus an analysis of social structures might be more likely to be privileged over issues of representation or performance in this textbook or draw upon philosophical questions about how epistemology, ontology, or metaphysics may inform discussions of gender and sexuality.

The absence of humanities perspectives might be particularly important for courses that explore questions about gender and media or sexuality and media from an aesthetic or cultural literacy perspective. For example, Judith Butler’s name appears only once without any other explanation, and other feminists who use examples from novels or films – like Sara Ahmed – are not cited at all.

As someone who studies digital culture, I was much less impressed with the cultural relevance of this textbook than other reviewers. Linking to the game Spent is an interesting move, but other free online games could be even more relevant examples of conversation starters about gender and sexuality. The chapter on media focuses on somewhat conventional examples from mainstream culture (Disney movies, sexist advertisements curated by Jean Kilbourne, etc.) and would be less useful for courses using queer cinema, queer games, or other non-heteronormative media texts.

Clarity rating: 3

Even though many young feminists are learning about feminism from online video channels and digital microcelebrities, relying on YouTube videos to provide key explanations undermines the clarity of the textbook. Embedded videos that aren’t dependent on external links might be preferable, as might more context for how a video should be watched and deconstructed. Many of these videos might actually confuse issues rather than simplify them, because the textbook tends to lack any explanation of who the vloggers are, what they represent, and the kinds of online performances they are known for. For example, Anita Sarkeesian’s work is presented as a mere vehicle for the Bechdel Test without introducing her profile as a target of GamerGate and a noted feminist critic of popular digital games. Similarly Franchesca Ramsey’s video about intersectionality, which leads to a broken link page, is inserted without unpacking the larger project of MTV’s Decoded. A key concept like intersectionality (and why white feminists might approach equal pay, criminalizing harassment, or reproductive rights differently from feminists of color) remains mysterious without the video link. Perhaps Kimberlé Crenshaw’s TED talk might be a more durable digital artifact in an online archive.

Topics that the authors don’t rely exclusively on a video to explain – such as the differences between micro, meso, and macro/global levels of analysis – were consequently more decipherable to readers and easier to apply in practice to examples that might be raised in class discussion. Unfortunately other topics that are described at an equal level of detail, such as scientific racism, are not clearly tied to the central topic of gender and sexuality, although the work of Patricia Hill Collins is used as a bridge.

Consistency rating: 3

There are points at which the textbook doesn’t seem to live up to its own feminist principles. It was difficult not to miss the irony of YouTube ads that played before the assigned content that often objectified women’s bodies and interrupted the consistency of the pedagogical experience.

Modularity rating: 3

Because the chapters were so short and undeveloped, it was difficult to imagine assigning a chapter in isolation. More modules about Latinx feminism or feminism from specific regions would be helpful for courses addressing global or transnational feminisms or feminisms that resist the Black/White binary. Modules about specific media platforms (broadcast television, print magazines, cinema, etc.) would also be helpful for courses that address representations of gender and sexuality.

Elements in the text often appear as listed rather than linked ideas, so that it was difficult to compare and contrast different approaches to the study of gender or sexuality in ways that might facilitate class discussion. Even when an interesting juxtaposition is suggested – such as the difference between “reproductive rights” and “reproductive justice” in the section on institutions – it is not adequately developed so that students can bring questions and comments to class.

The organization is designed so that the first section of the book covers core concepts, the second section of the book is devoted to binary categories as a form of structural critique, the third section of the book is devoted to institutions, including “family, marriage, media, medicine, law, education, the state, and work,” the forth section of the book covers “gender and work in the global economy,” and the fifth section is about “historical and contemporary feminist movements.” Placing the historical section last may be counterintuitive for many who write syllabi for introductory courses.

Having to navigate back to the modules each time a video is watched may be counterproductive for comprehension.

Although the textbook implies that media and visual images are important, they are only sprinkled sparsely through the pdf, which does not even include the cover image. The Creative Commons images selected often serve to demonstrate or illustrate a point rather than serve a potential objects of analysis for homework or in-class discussion. Some images (wine being decanted or books and a gavel) function more like clip art. Some of the images are at very low resolution and would have never been approved by a textbook art department, because they appear pixilated. On the other hand, for instructors who want to be able to update the curriculum easily with materials from the web or current events, this minimalism might be preferable.

As others have pointed out, proofreading of the volume ensures a professional presentation of the authors’ language.

Because this textbook foregrounds cultural sensitivity, this was not an issue, although the section on third wave feminism was not well organized and content might soon seem dated.

Because of its skeletal structure, this OER textbook would not be desirable for courses taught by faculty outside of GSWS departments or those without knowledge of feminist research communities. For example, graduate teaching assistants would probably need more guidance running classes with this textbook as a blueprint. As a tool to facilitate class discussion, it may often also be too rudimentary in telling too few stories or developing too few case studies to reconstitute essential fractures or tensions in contemporary feminist thought or robust talking points that students could bring to class without the lesson plan of the instructor.

The authors acknowledge that the textbook grows out of a single course (with a hierarchical professor/teaching assistant relationship that might tend to reproduce a single channel of knowledge) rather than the kind of cross-institutional interdisciplinary dialogue that characterizes WGS professional associations.

Reviewed by Rebecca Tolley, Professor, East Tennessee State University on 10/4/18

The authors' note that their intent with this textbook was creating an intersectional, interdisciplinary, anchoring reference text to be used in concert with other assigned readings, for that reason, it is not comprehensive in terms of fulfilling... read more

The authors' note that their intent with this textbook was creating an intersectional, interdisciplinary, anchoring reference text to be used in concert with other assigned readings, for that reason, it is not comprehensive in terms of fulfilling all my needs in an intro to women's studies textbook. Further, they state they are all sociologists, thus the textbook reflects a sociological bias or perspective. There is no index. Each unit includes a list of references. Key terms are bolded and defined within the text, but are not collected within each unit or at the front or back matter in glossary form. There is no mention of Title IX or VAWA, which I find disturbing. And only key leaders (the standards like Anthony and Stanton) are mentioned, and only briefly in the last unit which looks at historical feminist movements.

Would give a five except that there is a sociological bias. No errors other than omissions, which I mention in the note on comprehensiveness.

I found it most relevant. Updates should be easy to incorporate.

The text is okay. I didn't find it as engaging or inviting as other textbooks. I have doubts that my first and second year students will find it accessible. There is adequate context for some jargon/technical terminology used...(see my note on text's consistency), but I've encountered terms/concepts within this OER that I have not encountered in teaching from various textbooks in the discipline for seven years, that I would not introduce to my intro level students.

No complaints about the terminology and framework, other than there are terms and concepts used within this book that likely correlate with curriculum outcomes of U Mass Amherst, but do not correlate with my local outcomes. Since the text has a sociological bias, I assume that these terms I'm unfamiliar with are from that discipline. If I used this textbook in my class, I'd instruct students to ignore the several sections covering terms I'd not hold them responsible for learning.

Perfectly modular, easily divisible. It is formatted like a printed textbook, meaning that the pagination alternates from top left to top right. Perhaps more consistent pagination (like in APA formatting of an article/paper) would make assigning page number ranges easier. It's not a major problem, but a minor inconvenience. I know how some students struggle to decode information, so making things as simple and consistent as possible for users is best.

The choices the authors made in organizing the content is logical and clear. It is not a deterrent to teaching this material. In my experience with several Intro to Women's Studies textbooks, authors' often order the information in different, but progressives ways that introduced readers to the concepts, philosophies, issues, and trends in the discipline while also building upon knowledge gained from earlier units/chapters. Many of the paragraphs seem quite dense and lengthy. Chunking them smaller may help reading and engagement.

The entire text is a .pdf, which makes navigation a simple matter of paging/scrolling up or paging/scrolling down. I'm unaware of how or whether navigation anchors can be implemented with pdf, but having navigation links that return one to the TOC or to the top of the unit, would save time and make browsing for information easier. Images and charts are generally okay, though there is minor pixellation with one or two images. It is not an image-heavy text, so this is not a major concern. YouTube videos embedded within the textbook open and display with no problems.

No grammatical errors so glaring that I noticed. It appears to be well copy-edited.

Highly culturally sensitive. One of its strengths is section 3 of Unit 1, which provides identity terms. For example, it posits "people of color" against "colored people" and explains what each term means, to whom it refers, and why or why not a person would choose to use those words, or to NOT choose to use the terms. It does this with at least four or five other identity groups and suggests using terms that persons claiming those identities recognize and advocate using for themselves.

This is ok. As an OER, it does a good job of introducing the majority of key concepts, philosophies and issues within the discipline. No one textbook can cover all the material that a professor deems essential, unless she creates it herself.

Reviewed by Mindy Stokes, College Instructor, Clatsop Community College on 5/21/18

This text is great to use with undergraduate students who just beginning their college careers. It includes a historical analysis of the women's movements as well as the issues facing women today. read more

This text is great to use with undergraduate students who just beginning their college careers. It includes a historical analysis of the women's movements as well as the issues facing women today.

The content is accurate.

The text includes historical data as well as data about our current state of affairs. Newer theories such as Intersectionality are included. Gender identity is covered as well. This is important because these issues are in the news and popular culture right now.

The text is easy to read. Videos are included. This is a good book for college students beginning their academic career.

The text is consistent with its language. It discusses issues relevant today and uses language younger generations will be familiar with.

The book is broken into smaller sections that can be assigned at different times during the term.

The book is organized effectively. It details the history of feminist movements at the beginning and moves along from there talking about relevant topics of today such as non-binary genders, intersectionality, and body shaming.

The book is easy to read as a PDF. It has youtube videos inserted thoughout giving the reader a visual snapshot of the theoretical topic discussed.

The text doesn't contain grammatical errors.

The book is culturally relevant. It is suited for a younger audience, using language of today's world.

Reviewed by Elijah Edelman, Assistant Professor , Rhode Island College on 5/21/18

The text is distinctly more comprehensive in scope and content when contrasted to the unfortunately majority of current texts framed around gender studies. The text goes to great lengths to disrupt and unpack dominant discourses on gender and,... read more

The text is distinctly more comprehensive in scope and content when contrasted to the unfortunately majority of current texts framed around gender studies. The text goes to great lengths to disrupt and unpack dominant discourses on gender and, importantly, integrates this approach into the writing itself (for example, the authors refer to an individual as 'female-assigned' rather than 'female,' which provides excellent modeling for students). Of note, and a distinction from many 'gender, sex, sexuality' readers, this text weaves in many of the socio-political implications of ideologies (for example, the prison industrial complex, multi-national corporations, etc) around gender and sexuality, rather than simply providing definitions or presenting gender, sex or sexuality as enclosed systems. While the text does a truly excellent job unpacking gender with multiple frameworks, sex essentialism across disciplines, and feminist histories, we see far less on sexuality to the degree that it is perhaps misleading to describe this text as an introduction to women, gender, sexuality studies. I would frame this book as extremely comprehensive with regard to contemporary gender studies and feminist studies, but as having, in contrast, very little content on critical sexuality studies.

It is perhaps unfair or not entirely feasible for a social scientist, such as myself, to attempt to describe the accuracy or degrees of bias on topics that social scientists, such as myself, acknowledge are inherently subjective and require contextualization in time, place, and language. That said, working within the same north Atlantic, anglo-phone and time frame as the production of this text, I would describe this text as 'accurate and unbiased' in the sense that it acknowledges the 'messiness' and extreme variability in lived experiences of gender.

I would describe this book as very much 'up-to-date' on gender studies and I would envision it as remaining viable as up-to-date for at least several years. Due to the rapidly evolving language used around gender (particularly trans studies) and emerging forms of identity, this text (in addition to every single text intended for the instruction of gender studies) will need to be updated with a degree of frequency to remain as up-to-date as it is now. However, the text is sectioned in ways that updates could be made with relative ease.

The text is impressively accessible in fields known for jargon while also not overly simplifying importantly complex concepts. The prose is not overly 'conversational' nor is it as obtuse as likely this very review. This texts provides a clear means for students working at the introductory level to learn about gender critically without wading through oceans of words.

As a text that approaches and makes use of multiple frameworks in a field that is composed of multiple frameworks, the book remains internally consistent in that approach.

I would describe this text's modularity as being as one of it's defining and most valuable characteristics. One could easily use only the first several chapters or even the later sections focusing on the history of feminist movements at no deficit to the concepts in the selected sections.

I find the organization and flow of the text to be clear, intuitive, and in line with how a course on gender studies might flow across a semester.

The text does not appear to have any distorted images or text nor is it unclear at any point how to get from one point in the text to another.

I found no grammatical errors in my reading of the text.

My comment here is best split into two comments based on context/approach and framed as an anthropologist reviewing a text written by sociologists: 1) If we approach this text as being produced by and for those who are specifically focused on or in US or North Atlantic formations of gender, sex, and itinerant features of race, social class, and experience then it is fair to say this text is 'culturally relevant.' 2) If we approach this text from a cross-cultural or anthropological approach, or in non-US or North Atlantic contexts, I would not describe this text as being 'culturally relevant' in that it is overwhelmingly focused on US/North Atlantic understandings, experiences, histories, and conceptual frameworks. In other words, this text is appropriate for getting at a very geographically and linguistically-fixed (US/North Atlantic and written English) discussion of gender. This text would not be appropriate for courses or students approaching concepts of gender, sexuality and itinerant concepts of race and class outside of US/North Atlantic and Anglophone contexts. Finally, the authors do make note of their disciplinary approach (sociology) as well as limitations this produces in the introduction of the text and so my comment here is less an evaluation of the authors or the text and more a statement echoing the authors' noted focus/limitations of the text.

My only comment of concern--which is a critique that can be generalized to most, if not all, texts intended for an undergraduate audience--are the limited use of citations when discussing terms, concepts, or ideas that the authors did not themselves develop. To be clear, the authors do engage, discuss, and cite far more theorists than a general reader (including a clear and well-placed list of references at the end of each chapter) and this contributes significantly to the overall quality of the book. Moreover, to provide the level of citations needed or expected of, say, a journal article would likely result in a diminished quality of clarity, which runs counter to the goal of the text. However, as an example of a concept or claim that would benefit from a citation, on page 20 the authors write "...racial categories are different in Brazil, where many individuals with African ancestry are considered to be white." Brazilian scholars on race (see Santos et al 2009) or Brazilians who have African ancestry and are racialized as distinctly not white may not agree with this statement, nor is it clear how or who is the basis for this particular claim. In short, those adopting this text (and even those not adopting this text) should remind students how and why citations are used.

Reviewed by Milton Wendland, Instructional Faculty II, University of South Florida on 3/27/18

The text provides a broad overview of key concepts, although some that would seem to me foundational are missing (e.g., patriarchy, kyriarchy, Title IX, internalized racism/homophobia/misogyny, etc). Intersectionality is woven in throughout,... read more

The text provides a broad overview of key concepts, although some that would seem to me foundational are missing (e.g., patriarchy, kyriarchy, Title IX, internalized racism/homophobia/misogyny, etc). Intersectionality is woven in throughout, deeply enough for students to get a sense of its breadth, application, and usefulness but not so much or so deeply that the entire text is reduced to being a text on intersectionality. Due to its brevity, there are some large areas and topics that are not included but this is easily addressed by adding material of one’s own to the course. A glossary and an index would be helpful; searching the text works but for some terms can be time-consuming and misleading.

I didn’t see any factual or definitional inaccuracies, but because this is an introductory text (and introductory-lite, at that) some topics do get glossed a tad briefly – race, among them. One large issue that needs to be addressed is how the text asserts that “Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies (WGSS) is an interdisciplinary field.” That’s factually and conceptually inaccurate; these are three separate fields that have their own histories, approaches, and critical debates even as they share common subjects and methods. They need to be addressed separately, at least in passing, so as not to be confused in the minds of students. And, as with any text written by authors trained in specific disciplines, this text is deeply indebted to sociological thinking and only rarely explicitly includes other disciplinary approaches and methods. This could suggest to students that the fields of women’s studies, gender studies, and sexuality studies are the provenance of sociology only. While the instructor could easily add material to round out the text, it would be nice to have some of this in the text already.

While some of the statistics and data are already starting to show their age, the brevity and organization of the text makes it easy for the authors to update. I would think a yearly update could be accomplished with relative ease. The links worked but would need to be checked. Of course in areas like those covered in the text, the landscape of law and political culture can change rapidly but I think any instructor would easily be able to add in relevant/current material with ease.

The text is definitely chockful of concepts and terms that might be overwhelming on their own, but the brevity of the book suggests that it is designed to skeleton or frame a course and not be the sole or only text in the course. For that reason – and because the authors have chunked the text into units and sub-chapters – the relative density should be manageable, even for the first-semester college student.

Some texts with multiple authors reveal themselves as different units and chapters feel different and don’t flow. This text flows well. Terms and concepts are standard throughout and the writing style is consistent.

I appreciate the way this text is chunked into units and chapters that I believe I could assign in almost any order and that I could break up or group together to fit my course needs. The modularity or chunking also makes it easy for an instructor to insert additional introductory, supplementary, reinforcing, or mastery material of any type (e.g., readings, assignments, documentaries, group projects, discussion questions, etc).

The text flows well. It’s more common to see a chapter on feminist and its history at the beginning of a text but because of the modularity of the book, it is easy to change the order.

One small issue is that the font-size of the attributions and captions is too large and distracting, especially when it is only an attribution. Some are oddly placed (e.g., page 26).

I reviewed this text for content and not closely for composition issues like grammar and punctuation. That said, I didn’t notice any errors.

I didn’t see anything blatantly or directly insensitive or offensive. However, because of its brevity, the text sometimes glosses perhaps a tad lightly. For example, race is addressed and covered but I was left wondering if my students would leave the text with a more nuanced understanding of race or not.

Reviewed by Kathryn Klement, Assistant Professor, Bemidji State University on 2/1/18

The authors are very comprehensive in their topic coverage. I particularly like how discussion of intersectionality permeates the text outside of its specific chapter. I also like how the authors supplemented their text with embedded videos,... read more

The authors are very comprehensive in their topic coverage. I particularly like how discussion of intersectionality permeates the text outside of its specific chapter. I also like how the authors supplemented their text with embedded videos, which heightened the accessibility of some of the material. One limitation is that there is no glossary, so readers would need to keyword search within the document (and to do that, they'd need to know what they were looking for).

The authors use sociological and other social science research to back up their work, and provide reference lists for each unit. It is possible that there are new data that could challenge some of the statements since the text was published, but it's quite current (e.g., using 2015 Census data). The language is unbiased in that it centers marginalized experiences.

The language used to describe and refer to marginalized identities is current (and explained well). The units are arranged in reasonable chunks, and the content groups make sense.

The writing is very clear, and speaking to the comprehensiveness of content, covers a large amount of terms and material. For an introductory text, there are a lot of social science terms, but I think the authors do a good job of explaining them, in addition to providing sources for further information, including videos.

The consistency is great across all sections of the text. Intersectional perspectives inform all relevant content areas.

Chapters range from 3-6 pages, and often include graphics and/or embedded videos. The paragraphs are also manageable. As the chapters are short, they can be assigned individually or in groups. For some chapters, it will make more sense to have other content explained first (e.g., discussing heteronormativity and gender prior to discussing the U.S. family structure), but most of the content can be read in any order. Some (including me) might want to start a class with a historical perspective of women's movements, though the authors put this content at the end of the text.

The units are organized into groups of topics that make sense. Due to the modularity of some topics, the order could be arbitrary, but some later topics definitely benefit from the foundation of earlier topics (e.g., race, class, and gender earlier; racialized, gendered, and sexualized labor later).

The text, images, and links are clear and well-formatted.

I noticed no spelling or grammar mistakes.

As I mentioned earlier, the terminology is up-to-date. The only area I found deficient was a discussion of religious identity. Religion is mentioned in passing a few times, but does not have its own chapter. As women comprise the majority of religious adherents, and several major religions have oppressive roots (which have many implications for women and trans folks), I would like to have seen some coverage.

I think the authors provide an excellent introduction to the sociological perspective of women, gender, and sexuality.

Reviewed by Vicki McGarvey, Learning & Information Services Manager, Staffordshire University on 2/1/18

This is a clear and concise introduction, to women, gender and sexuality. It provides a theoretical context and examines the various societal issues and constructs that shape individual beliefs. The book focuses on work and the economy, culture,... read more

This is a clear and concise introduction, to women, gender and sexuality. It provides a theoretical context and examines the various societal issues and constructs that shape individual beliefs. The book focuses on work and the economy, culture, historical and contemporary movements, as well as the construction of binary systems, but not in isolation, it argues that the overlapping of systems reinforces beliefs.

Given the comprehensiveness of the book, an interactive index and particularly a glossary would be helpful, as readers may find this a useful reference resource whilst reading, especially for keeping track of some of the acronyms and at a later date as a refresher for some of the terminology used within the subject.

It is written from an American perspective, so many of the illustrations reflect this, however, it would be of value for those that are researching the subject from a comparative perspective. Furthermore, the units on “Theoretical Frameworks and Concepts” “Binary Systems and Constructions of Difference” have generic observations that could be integrated within most introductory courses on the subject.

The book is structured into Units with images and cleverly incorporates multimedia. It is a good starting point for readers who want to undertake further research, and the incorporated references will help with this.

Given the nature of the subject keeping the content up-to-date may be a bit of a challenge, with respect to providing recent illustrations within the areas covered, and as terminology change. However, the historical observations will still remain relevant.

The book is clear and concise give the complexity of the subject areas. The inclusion of images and multimedia helps to consolidate the observations and the arguments within the text. Terminology and theory are necessary to explain the overlapping systems identified within the book, but these are written in a straightforward manner although a glossary would also help here.

Despite there being several authors of this book the text remains consistent throughout. The division into units and chapters within the units helps to pace the reader and would also help any teacher who would like to repurpose any aspect and integrate into their learning materials. The terminology is illustrated with real life examples which also assists understanding.

The modularity of the book is one if its strengths. Given that this can be a complex subject, as it refers to social theory, history, medicine and science the structure and the pacing helps the reader to digest this. The visuals and multimedia also break up the text. The writing is consistent and clear throughout and the units and chapters are not to onerous or large which is important in an introductory text.

The book flows well, and the Units interrelate but can equally standalone. The theoretical start frames the subject well, before moving into the societal and historical units. The clear text is written within a critical context.

The PDF format is not interactive, but it is possible to search the text. The units and the chapters, however, help with the navigation. There was no issue navigating to the videos, and images rendered well and clearly captioned, including the creative commons licence.

I could not see any errors with the book. One of the strengths of this book is its accessibly writing style throughout.

The book is written in an inclusive way, the illustrations are also representative, although from an American perspective which is not particularly clear in the title and the introduction. However, the theoretical overviews could be usefully integrated within any teaching within the area. The subject matter is presented from a cross cultural perspective, including, observations about race, class, globalisation,social activism and justice and the intersections between these in developing individual beliefs. Possibly a Unit comparing with another country/countires or some comparative examples within the text would be of help, and an extra dimension to some of the arguments presented.

The title clearly states that this is an introduction to women gender and sexuality studies which is clearly is. It opens the door to the subject and the lively writing style would help the reader to look further into the subject, and possibly more complex work. Apart from theoretical observation, it is very much from an American perspective which could be made a little bit clearer, but nevertheless given that it is not too lengthy and well set out it would be of useful to any reader studying or interested in the subject.

Reviewed by Janice Okoomian, Assistant Professor, Rhode Island College on 2/1/18

A number of important concepts are not covered or are only mentioned in passing -- the role of religion, for instance, in constructing ideologies of gender. More detail is needed to explain the many concepts presented. Examples need to be more... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 2 see less

A number of important concepts are not covered or are only mentioned in passing -- the role of religion, for instance, in constructing ideologies of gender. More detail is needed to explain the many concepts presented. Examples need to be more robust and vibrant in order to illustrate concepts.

Generally, the content is accurate, but as all of the authors are sociologists, there is an inherent bias in its single disciplinary perspective.

Some examples will need to be updated. For instance, there is a new class action suit against Walmart, which is not mentioned in the vignette about Walmart. Gender expression and sexuality terminology will also need to be updated soon.

Clarity rating: 2

The book is written clearly but would not be accessible for many students, who will find it dry and boring. I attribute this to the density of theoretical concepts, which are presented one after another without sufficient examples or images.

This is an area of strength for this book. Terminology and framework are internally consistent.

The text is divided into logical chunks, and I could easily see assigning a module of a few pages as a single reading.

The organization makes sense and is easy to follow.

Navigation was easy and images were not distorted.

Impeccable written expression.

Cultural Relevance rating: 2

Although the authors themselves observe that racial difference cannot be reduced to white/black distinctions, it reproduces the very reductive racial discourse it objects to. While African American women are well represented in the text, there is a curious absence of representation of other racial or ethnic groups in the text and especially in the images.

Like many introductory textbooks in the field, this one is written by sociologists. The authors regard the fact that they are all sociologists, "as both a strength and weakness of the text, as it provides a strong sociological approach but does not cover the entire range of work in the field.” (7) I believe it to be much more of a weakness than a strength, however, because when introductory texts are written from a single disciplinary perspective it skews and impoverishes students' understanding of GWSS. It would be necessary to balance the text with readings from other disciplines -- history, literary studies, art history, religion, philosophy, anthropology, and all the rest -- in order to provide a more accurate representation of the field.

In addition, the concept-heavy text would be heavy going for many of today's students. It reads more like an extended glossary than anything else. To make the text more engaging, there should many many more examples, vignettes, stories, scenarios, and exercises to help students understand concepts and engage in learning how to apply them. The pictures are particularly problematic. There are too few of them, some of them are boring (law books with a gavel), while others are irrelevant (pouring wine into a decanter). The layout of the textbook is also not engaging -- very text dense, with too little attention paid to document design. .

Reviewed by Michelle Buchberger, Assistant Professor, Miami University on 2/1/18

The text is brief. It is 132 pages, covering the following topics: 1. Critical Introduction to the Field 2. Theorizing Lived Experiences 3. Identity Terms 4. Conceptualizing Structures of Power 5. Social Constructionism 6. Intersectionality 7.... read more

The text is brief. It is 132 pages, covering the following topics: 1. Critical Introduction to the Field 2. Theorizing Lived Experiences 3. Identity Terms 4. Conceptualizing Structures of Power 5. Social Constructionism 6. Intersectionality 7. Introduction: Binary Systems 8. Theorizing Sex/Gender/Sexuality 9. Gender and Sex – Transgender and Intersex 10. Sexualities 11. Masculinities 12. Race 13. Class 14. Alternatives to Binary Systems 15. Introduction: Institutions, Cultures, and Structures 16. Family 17. Media 18. Medicine, Health, and Reproductive Justice 19. State, Laws, and Prisons 20. Intersecting Institutions Case Study: The Struggle to End Gendered Violence and Violence Against Women 21. Introduction: Gender, Work and Globalization 22. Gender and Work in the US 23. Gender and the US Welfare State 24. Transnational Production and Globalization 25. Racialized, Gendered, and Sexualized Labor in the Global Economy 26. Introduction: Feminist Movements 27. 19th Century Feminist Movements 28. Early to Late 20th Century Feminist Movements 29. Third Wave and Queer Feminist Movements

I found no errors in the book; neither spelling/grammar not content.

The content is up to date, including YouTube videos - all links worked when I tested them.

The book is written in a clear, accessible style. There are several illustrations in the text.

The terminology and framework are consistent.

The units are very short, and chunked into 29 pieces. This would be easy to add as supplementary readings if used with another more comprehensive text.

The book flows very effectively. Key words are bolded and clearly explained the first time they appear.

No problems with hyperlinks or distortion. Some of the images are a bit grainy, but are still viewable on a computer screen. Distorted when printed.

No grammatical errors that I found.

Nothing offensive. The book is almost exclusively US focussed. Sections on Global and Transnational aspects of feminism are very brief.

This 132 page volume was written by four UMASS professors. It is a well-produced and well-presented work, albeit rather brief and focused (as the authors themselves admit) on a sociological perspective. It was created specifically to counter the increasing cost of textbooks in the field, and the contents, if brief, cover significant topics in the field of Women, Gender, and Sexuality studies.

Reviewed by Stef Woods, Professorial Lecturer, American University on 2/1/18

I was impressed with the book's comprehensiveness. I particularly appreciated the book's discussion of the field of sexuality studies, the binary, media and the importance of language. I also loved how the book incorporated videos. This book would... read more

I was impressed with the book's comprehensiveness. I particularly appreciated the book's discussion of the field of sexuality studies, the binary, media and the importance of language. I also loved how the book incorporated videos. This book would work well for a survey or introductory course in sexuality studies. But, it's comprehensive enough to also be utilized for discrete class topics. And, finally, I liked how each unit had references at the end. That would make it easy for a junior or senior to use the text to provide a clear overview about a topic and then delve into the sources for a research paper.

I regard the text to be accurate. With that said, this is a broad-brush approach to the subject matter. If someone requires an in-depth examination of a topic in sexuality studies, I would then check the sources that the book references for that.

The section on race could have been strengthened, though. I like the inclusion of scientific racism, But I wish that the authors had discussed: 1) that there is no such thing as a pure genetically homogeneous race; and 2) that there is no genetic basis for race.

With that said, I was surprised that the book didn't reference Stonewall at all. I felt as though Black Lives Matter and the Women's March should have been addressed in the body of the text and not just in photographs. I also wish that there was a discussion on post-feminism. (I don't agree that we live in a post-feminist world, but some people do.) Finally,

I anticipate that students who read this book will appreciate the inclusion of videos and graphs. With that said, I hope that these will be updated. Videos reflect popular culture, which changes with the time. And, the graphs will lose their relevance with each passing year.

This book is exceptionally clear. I particularly appreciate the use of bold for key phrases, the definitions in the first unit, and the inclusion of videos and graphs.

I found the book to be internally consistent, but also to effectively present points in different contexts. This was evident in the book's discussion of intersectionality and feminism.

I really appreciated how the text was divided. This book could easily be assigned as sub-sections, units or in its entirety.

It seemed odd to me to have the history unit at the end of the book. To me, it would have made more sense to discuss history in the second or third unit in the book.

I wish that the table of contents had page numbers. But, overall, I thought that the book was easy to navigate and read.

I wasn't reading with eagle-eye editing in mind, but the chapters appear to be grammatically correct.

I appreciated the discussion about intersectionality, but if I'm teaching about race as a social construct or Black Lives Matter, I would assign another resource.

I teach a class entitled Sexuality and Social Media. I also have sections about feminism, gender identity, othering/ableist language and intersectionality in three other classes I teach. I would recommend this book -- or sections of this book -- for an Introduction to Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies class or for other classes that incorporate WGSS concepts and theories into their curricula.I know that students appreciate online resources and how that makes materials more accessible to a larger number of students. I will be assigning portions of this book next semester and letting other instructors in the WGSS program know about it.

Reviewed by Maina C. Singh, Scholar in Residence, School of International Service, American University on 2/1/18

The title of the book itself reflects its wide span of coverage -- from women and gender to more complex debates in Sexuality Studies. It covers each of these areas in great detail providing examples which would be familiar and relevant to... read more

The title of the book itself reflects its wide span of coverage -- from women and gender to more complex debates in Sexuality Studies. It covers each of these areas in great detail providing examples which would be familiar and relevant to students in the US.

The content is well-curated with a adequate self-reflexiveness.

I don't believe that the content of this book will become obsolete anytime soon. However, textbooks such as this one, which provide several examples from contemporary American society and politics may require updates in due course.

Should a future instructor desire to add or substitute examples, I believe that it should be easy to make modifications.

A major strength of this book is its overall clarity and lucidity in explaining important concepts. Teaching courses on Gender and Sexuality requires unpacking wide-ranging concepts like Race, Class , Hegemony and so forth in order to contextualize gender in terms of structural inequalities rooted in colonialism, global production patterns , labor migrations etc. Unit 2 of this book "Challenging Binary Systems and Constructions of Difference" provides some excellent and lucid explanations for this project.

The terminology and framework of the book create consistent flow. The book displays a student-centric approach to learning.

The structure of the book enables easy insertion or modifications for future Instructors who may wish to assign only parts of this textbook. In fact, for the same reason, this textbook can be productively used for Online Teaching as well, where it would be easy to assign certain sections to any module which may require a discussion of Gender issues. This can be relevant to courses in Sociology, Area Studies or International Relations.

From Unit 1 which introduces the subject terrain to Units 4 ( 'Gender and Work in the Global Economy' ) and finally Unit 5 ( 'Historical and Contemporary Feminist Social Movements' ), the book expands its canvas and deepens its critique with a wealth of detail and commentary that is commendable.

The interface is user-friendly and student-friendly !

Did not find any significant problems with the grammar.

The text is culturally sensitive but is firmly rooted in a North American context. Thus, ' inclusiveness' of the authors is reflected in the attention that they pay to examining gender and power as it relates to the underprivileged and minority groups whether they may be oppressed due to Race, Class or Sexuality. All of this has a North American focus-- even when there is a discussion of "Gender and Work in the Global Economy" Therefore, if an Instructor wishes to offer a course on Gender Studies encompassing a wider transnational canvas, then the examples presented here offer limited possibilities.

The units in this textbook which explain concepts, terms and frameworks related to Gender and Sexuality are of immense value. However, if OER initiatives are aimed at cost-reduction not only for for students in the US, but also transnationally, then for students of 'Gender and Sexuality Studies' outside the US, this textbook would have limited value because the debates presented herein are predominantly US-centric. Even the last Unit which discusses "Historical and Contemporary Feminist Social Movements" , would have limited resonance for students in the Global South. Since OER initiatives also seek to provide cost-free textbooks globally, this is an important factor to bear in mind.

Table of Contents

Unit I: An Introduction to Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies: Grounding Theoretical Frameworks and Concepts

• Critical Introduction to the Field
• Theorizing Lived Experiences
• Identity Terms
• Conceptualizing Structures of Power
• Social Constructionism
• Intersectionality
• References: Unit I

Unit II: Challenging Binary Systems and Constructions of Difference

• Introduction: Binary Systems
• The Sex/Gender/Sexuality System
• Gender and Sex - Transgender and Intersex
• Sexualities
• Masculinities
• Alternatives to Binary Systems
• References: Unit II

Unit III: Institutions, Culture, and Structures

• Introduction: Institutions, Cultures, and Structures
• Medicine, Health, and Reproductive Justice
• The State, Law, and the Prison System
• Intersecting Institutions Case Study: The Struggle to End Gendered Violence and Violence Against Women
• References: Unit III

Unit IV: Gender and Work in the Global Economy

• Introduction: Gender and Work in the Global Economy
• Gender and Work in the US
• Gender and the US Welfare State
• Transnational Production and Globalization
• Racialized, Gendered, and Sexualized Labor in the Global Economy
• References: Unit IV

Unit V: Historical and Contemporary Feminist Social Movements

• Introduction: Feminist Movements
• 19th Century Feminist Movements
• Early to Late 20th Century Feminist Movements
• Third Wave and Queer Feminist Movements
• References: Unit V

Ancillary Material

About the book.

This textbook introduces key feminist concepts and analytical frameworks used in the interdisciplinary Women, Gender, Sexualities field. It unpacks the social construction of knowledge and categories of difference, processes and structures of power and inequality, with a focus on gendered labor in the global economy, and the historical development of feminist social movements. The book emphasizes feminist sociological approaches to analyzing structures of power, drawing heavily from empirical feminist research.

About the Contributors

Miliann Kang is associate professor in Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she is also affiliated faculty in Sociology and Asian/Asian American Studies. Her book, The Managed Hand: Race, Gender and the Body in Beauty Service Work (2010, University of California Press) addresses gendered processes and relations in immigrant women’s work focusing on Asian-owned nail salons. It won four awards from the American Sociological Association (Sections on Racial and Ethnic Minorities; Sex and Gender; Race, Gender, and Class; and Asia/Asian America) and the Sara Whaley book prize from the National Women’s Studies Association. She is currently researching work-family issues for Asian American women, and the racial politics of mothering. Her research has been supported by the American Association of University Women, the Ford Foundation, the Institute for Asian American Studies at UMass Boston, the Labor Relations and Research Center at UMass Amherst and the Social Science Research Council. She received her Ph.D. from New York University and her B.A. magna cum laude from Harvard University.

Donovan Lessard is a researcher and public health evaluator with an MA in sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Advanced Feminist Studies.

Laura Heston is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at University Massachusetts, Amherst.

Sonny Nordmarken  is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at University Massachusetts, Amherst.

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TOP 100 Gender Equality Essay Topics

Table of Contents

Need ideas for argumentative essay on gender inequality? We’ve got a bunch!

… But let’s start off with a brief intro.

What is gender equality?

Equality between the sexes is a huge part of basic human rights. It means that men and women have the same opportunities to fulfil their potential in all spheres of life.

Today, we still face inequality issues as there is a persistent gap in access to opportunities for men and women.

Women have less access to decision-making and higher education. They constantly face obstacles at the workplace and have greater safety risks. Maintaining equal rights for both sexes is critical for meeting a wide range of goals in global development.

Inequality between the sexes is an interesting area to study so high school, college, and university students are often assigned to write essays on gender topics.

In this article, we are going to discuss the key peculiarities of gender equality essay. Besides, we have created a list of the best essay topic ideas.

What is the specifics of gender equality essay?

Equality and inequality between the sexes are important historical and current social issues which impact the way students and their families live. They are common topics for college papers in psychology, sociology, gender studies.

When writing an essay on equality between the sexes, you need to argue for a strong point of view and support your argument with relevant evidence gathered from multiple sources.

But first, you’d need to choose a good topic which is neither too broad nor too narrow to research.

Research is crucial for the success of your essay because you should develop a strong argument based on an in-depth study of various scholarly sources.

Equality between sexes is a complex problem. You have to consider different aspects and controversial points of view on specific issues, show your ability to think critically, develop a strong thesis statement, and build a logical argument, which can make a great impression on your audience.

If you are looking for interesting gender equality essay topics, here you will find a great list of 100 topic ideas for writing essays and research papers on gender issues in contemporary society.

Should you find that some topics are too broad, feel free to narrow them down.

Powerful gender equality essay topics

Here are the top 25 hottest topics for your argumentative opinion paper on gender issues.

Whether you are searching for original creative ideas for gender equality in sports essay or need inspiration for gender equality in education essay, we’ve got you covered.

Use imagination and creativity to demonstrate your approach.

• Analyze gender-based violence in different countries
• Compare wage gap between the sexes in different countries
• Explain the purpose of gender mainstreaming
• Implications of sex differences in the human brain
• How can we teach boys and girls that they have equal rights?
• Discuss gender-neutral management practices
• Promotion of equal opportunities for men and women in sports
• What does it mean to be transgender?
• Discuss the empowerment of women
• Why is gender-blindness a problem for women?
• Why are girls at greater risk of sexual violence and exploitation?
• Women as victims of human trafficking
• Analyze the glass ceiling in management
• Impact of ideology in determining relations between sexes
• Obstacles that prevent girls from getting quality education in African countries
• Why are so few women in STEM?
• Major challenges women face at the workplace
• How do women in sport fight for equality?
• Women, sports, and media institutions
• Contribution of women in the development of the world economy
• Role of gender diversity in innovation and scientific discovery
• What can be done to make cities safer for women and girls?
• International trends in women’s empowerment
• Role of schools in teaching children behaviours considered appropriate for their sex
• Feminism on social relations uniting women and men as groups

Gender roles essay topics

We can measure the equality of men and women by looking at how both sexes are represented in a range of different roles. You don’t have to do extensive and tiresome research to come up with gender roles essay topics, as we have already done it for you.

Have a look at this short list of top-notch topic ideas .

• Are paternity and maternity leaves equally important for babies?
• Imagine women-dominated society and describe it
• Sex roles in contemporary western societies
• Compare theories of gender development
• Adoption of sex-role stereotyped behaviours
• What steps should be taken to achieve gender-parity in parenting?
• What is gender identity?
• Emotional differences between men and women
• Issues modern feminism faces
• Sexual orientation and gender identity
• Benefits of investing in girls’ education
• Patriarchal attitudes and stereotypes in family relationships
• Toys and games of girls and boys
• Roles of men and women in politics
• Compare career opportunities for both sexes in the military
• Women in the US military
• Academic careers and sex equity
• Should men play larger roles in childcare?
• Impact of an ageing population on women’s economic welfare
• Historical determinants of contemporary differences in sex roles
• Gender-related issues in gaming
• Culture and sex-role stereotypes in advertisements
• What are feminine traits?
• Sex role theory in sociology
• Causes of sex differences and similarities in behaviour

Gender inequality research paper topics

Examples of inequality can be found in the everyday life of different women in many countries across the globe. Our gender inequality research paper topics are devoted to different issues that display discrimination of women throughout the world.

Choose any topic you like, research it, brainstorm ideas, and create a detailed gender inequality essay outline before you start working on your first draft.

Start off with making a debatable thesis, then write an engaging introduction, convincing main body, and strong conclusion for gender inequality essay .

• Aspects of sex discrimination
• Main indications of inequality between the sexes
• Causes of sex discrimination
• Inferior role of women in the relationships
• Sex differences in education
• Can education solve issues of inequality between the sexes?
• Impact of discrimination on early childhood development
• Why do women have limited professional opportunities in sports?
• Gender discrimination in sports
• Lack of women having leadership roles
• Inequality between the sexes in work-family balance
• Top factors that impact inequality at a workplace
• What can governments do to close the gender gap at work?
• Sex discrimination in human resource processes and practices
• Gender inequality in work organizations
• Factors causing inequality between men and women in developing countries
• Work-home conflict as a symptom of inequality between men and women
• Why are mothers less wealthy than women without children?
• Forms of sex discrimination in a contemporary society
• Sex discrimination in the classroom
• Justification of inequality in American history
• Origins of sex discrimination
• Motherhood and segregation in labour markets
• Sex discrimination in marriage
• Can technology reduce sex discrimination?

Most controversial gender topics

Need a good controversial topic for gender stereotypes essay? Here are some popular debatable topics concerning various gender problems people face nowadays.

They are discussed in scientific studies, newspaper articles, and social media posts. If you choose any of them, you will need to perform in-depth research to prepare an impressive piece of writing.

• How do gender misconceptions impact behaviour?
• Most common outdated sex-role stereotypes
• How does gay marriage influence straight marriage?
• Explain the role of sexuality in sex-role stereotyping
• Role of media in breaking sex-role stereotypes
• Discuss the dual approach to equality between men and women
• Are women better than men or are they equal?
• Sex-role stereotypes at a workplace
• Racial variations in gender-related attitudes
• Role of feminism in creating the alternative culture for women
• Feminism and transgender theory
• Gender stereotypes in science and education
• Are sex roles important for society?
• Future of gender norms
• How can we make a better world for women?
• Are men the weaker sex?
• Beauty pageants and women’s empowerment
• Are women better communicators?
• What are the origins of sexual orientation?
• Should prostitution be legal?
• Pros and cons of being a feminist
• Advantages and disadvantages of being a woman
• Can movies defy gender stereotypes?
• Sexuality and politics

Feel free to use these powerful topic ideas for writing a good college-level gender equality essay or as a starting point for your study.

No time to do decent research and write your top-notch paper? No big deal! Choose any topic from our list and let a pro write the essay for you!

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• What happened on January 6, 2021?
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In American studies and cultural studies, as in the humanities more broadly, scholars use the term “gender” when they wish to expose a seemingly neutral analysis as male oriented and when they wish to turn critical attention from men to women. In this way, a gender analysis exposes the false universalization of male subjectivity and remarks on the differences produced by the social marking we call “sex” or “sexual difference.” Poststructuralist feminist theory queries this common usage by suggesting that the critique of male bias or gender neutrality comes with its own set of problems—namely, a premature and problematic stabilization of the meaning of “woman” and “female.” In 1990, Judith Butler famously named and theorized the “trouble” that “gender” both performs and covers up. In doing so, she consolidated a new form of gender theory focused on what is now widely (and variably) referred to as “performativity.” This focus on gender as something that is performed has enabled new modes of thinking about how the transgendered body is (and can be) inhabited, about the emergence of queer subcultures, and about practices that promise to radically destabilize the meaning of all social genders.

As a term, “gender” comes to cultural studies from sexology, most explicitly from the work of psychologist John Money (Money and Ehrhardt 1972). Money is credited with (and readily claimed) the invention of the term in 1955 to describe the social enactment of sex roles; he used the term to formalize the distinction between bodily sex (male and female) and social roles (masculinity and femininity) and to note the frequent discontinuities between sex and role. Since sex neither predicts nor guarantees gender role, there is some flexibility built into the sex-gender system. This reasoning led Money to recommend sex reassignment in a now-infamous case in which a young boy lost his penis during circumcision. Given the boy’s young age, Money proposed to the parents that they raise him as a girl and predicted that there would be no ill effects. Money’s prediction proved disastrously wrong, as the young girl grew up troubled and eventually committed suicide after being told about the decisions that had been made on his/her behalf as a baby.

This case has reanimated claims that gender is a biological fact rather than a cultural invention and has led some medical practitioners to reinvest in the essential relationship between sex and gender. It has also been used by some gender theorists to argue that the gendering of the sexed body begins immediately, as soon as the child is born, and that this sociobiological process is every bit as rigid and immutable as a genetic code. The latter claim (concerning the immutability of socialization) has been critiqued by poststructuralist thinkers who suggest that our understanding of the relation between sex and gender ought to be reversed: gender ideology produces the epistemological framework within which sex takes on meaning rather than the other way around (Laqueur 1990; Fausto-Sterling 1993).

All these arguments about how we ought to talk and think about sex and gender assume a related question about how the modern sex-gender system came into being in the first place. Different disciplines answer this question differently. In anthropology, Gayle Rubin’s work on “the traffic in women” (1975) builds on Claude Lévi-Strauss’s structuralist analysis of kinship (1971) to locate the roots of the hierarchical organization of a binary gender system in precapitalist societies in which kinship relied on incest taboos and the exchange of women between men. Esther Newton’s (1972) ethnographic research on drag queens in Chicago in the 1960s and 1970s finds gender to be an interlocking system of performances and forms of self-knowing that only become visible as such when we see them theatricalized in the drag queen’s cabaret act. In sociology, Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna (1990) have produced a brilliant handbook on the production of gendered bodies, providing readers with a vocabulary and a set of definitions for the study of gender as a system of norms.

Working across these disciplinary formations, American studies and cultural studies scholarship on gender continues under numerous headings and rubrics. Researchers studying the effects of globalization have paid particular attention to transformations in the labor of women under new phases of capitalism (Enloe 1989; Kempadoo and Doezema 1998). Scholars working on race have traced very specific histories of gender formation in relation to racial projects that attribute gender and sexual pathology to oppressed groups. In African American contexts, for example, black femininity has often been represented as vexed by the idealization of white femininity on the one hand and the cultural stereotyping of black women as strong, physical, and tough on the other (Hammonds 1997). Other scholars seeking to denaturalize cultural conceptions of manhood have examined masculinity in terms of new forms of work, new roles for men in the home, the function of racialized masculinities, new styles of classed masculinity, the impact of immigrant masculinities on national manhood, and the influence of minority and nonmale masculinities on gender norms (Bederman 1995; Sinha 1995; Harper 1996). Queer theorists have detached gender from the sexed body, often documenting the productive nature of gender variance and its impact on the way gender is understood and lived.

In all of these research contexts, gender is understood as a marker of social difference: a bodily performance of normativity and the challenges made to it. It names a social relation that subjects often experience as organic, ingrained, “real,” invisible, and immutable; it also names a primary mode of oppression that sorts human bodies into binary categories in order to assign labor, responsibilities, moral attributes, and emotional styles. In recent years, cultural work dedicated to shifting and rearticulating the signifying field of gender has been ongoing in queer and transgender subcultures. Drag-king shows, for example, have developed along very different lines than their drag-queen counterparts (including those documented by Newton). While drag queens tend to embody and enact an explicitly ironic relation to gender that has come to be called “camp,” drag kings often apply pressure to the notion of natural genders by imitating, inhabiting, and performing masculinity in intensely sincere modes. Whereas camp formulations of gender by gay men have relied heavily on the idea that the viewer knows and can see the intense disidentifications between the drag queen and femininity, drag-king acts more often depend on the sedimented and earnest investments made by the dyke and trans performers in their masculinities. Drag-king acts disorient spectators and make them unsure of the proper markings of sex, gender, desire, and attraction. In the process, such performances produce potent new constellations of sex and theater (Halberstam 1998).

Understood as queer interventions into gender deconstruction, drag-king performances emerge quite specifically from feminist critiques of dominant masculinities. In this sense, they can be viewed as growing out of earlier practices of feminist theory and activism. Consider Valerie Solanas’s infamous and outrageous 1968 SCUM Manifesto (SCUM stood for “Society for Cutting Up Men”), in which she argued that we should do away with men and attach all the positive attributes that are currently assigned to males to females. As long as we have sperm banks and the means for artificial reproduction, she argued, men have become irrelevant. While Solanas’s manifesto is hard to read as anything more than a Swiftian modest proposal, her hilarious conclusions about the redundancy of the male sex (“he is a half-dead, unresponsive lump, incapable of giving or receiving pleasure or happiness; consequently he is an utter bore, an inoffensive blob,” etc. [(1968) 2004, 36]) take a refreshingly extreme approach to the gender question. The performative work of the manifesto (its theatricalization of refusal, failure, and female anger and resentment; its combination of seriousness and humor) links it to contemporary queer and transgender theaters of gender. Like Solanas’s manifesto, drag-king cultures offer a vision of the ways in which subcultural groups and theorists busily reinvent the meaning of gender even as the culture at large confirms its stability.

It is revealing, then, that Solanas is at once the most utopian and dystopian of gender theorists. While Butler, in her commitment to deconstructive undecidability, cannot possibly foretell any of gender’s possible futures (even as she describes how gender is “done” and “undone”), Solanas is quite happy to make grand predictions about endings. Many academic and nonacademic gender theorists after Solanas have also called for the end of gender, noted the redundancy of the category, and argued for new and alternative systems of making sense of bodily difference (Bornstein 1994; Kessler 1998). But socially sedimented categories are hard to erase, and efforts to do so often have more toxic effects than the decision to inhabit them. Other theorists, therefore, have responded by calling for more categories, a wider range of possible identifications, and a more eclectic and open-ended understanding of the meanings of those categories (Fausto-Sterling 2000). It seems, then, that we are probably not quite ready to do away with gender—or with one gender, in particular—but we can at least begin to imagine other genders.

Whether by manifesto or reasoned argumentation, scholars in the fields of American studies and cultural studies have made gender into a primary lens of intellectual inquiry, and the evolution of gender studies marks one of the more successful versions of interdisciplinarity in the academy. Indeed, as US universities continue to experience the dissolution of disciplinarity, a critical gender studies paradigm could well surge to the forefront of new arrangements of knowledge production. At a time when both students and administrators are questioning the usefulness and relevance of fields such as English and comparative literature, gender studies may provide a better way of framing, asking, and even answering hard questions about ideology, social formations, political movements, and shifts in perceptions of embodiment and community. Gender studies programs and departments, many of which emerged out of women’s studies initiatives in the 1970s, are poised to make the transition into the next era of knowledge production in ways that less interdisciplinary areas are not. The quarrels and struggles that have made gender studies such a difficult place to be are also the building blocks of change. While the traditional disciplines often lack the institutional and intellectual flexibility to transform quickly, gender studies is and has always been an evolving project, one that can provide a particularly generative site for new work that, at its best, responds creatively and dynamically to emerging research questions and cultural forms while also entering into dialogue with other (more or less established) interdisciplinary projects, including cultural studies, American studies, film studies, science studies, ethnic studies, postcolonial studies, and queer studies.

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Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies

• Categories: Gender Human Sexuality

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Published: Nov 8, 2019

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According to an excerpt from Learning to Be Gendered by Eckert and Ginet, “Being a girl or boy is not a stable state but an ongoing accomplishment, something that is actively done both by the individual and by those  in various [...]

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Gender Studies and Society Essay

Introduction, gender identities in the different cultures, gender attitudes studies, reference list.

Gender issues such as equality between men and women and gender roles evoke strong reactions in the contemporary world. Much like race, ethnic, and class stereotypes, gender stereotypes, exclusion, and discrimination are central to politics in many countries.

In particular, issues of feminist exclusion and discrimination characterized by a relatively low political participation of women remain unresolved and often elicit negative feelings in many societies. Additionally, these issues shape a society’s politics especially the policies of left-wing parties and feminist activist groups. For this reason, gender issues in contemporary societies require a cautious approach when addressing them.

Gender issues, particularly gender equality, roles, relations, and political participation are common stereotypes despite the massive awareness campaigns and legislations on these issues. Ideally, studying gender aims at promoting knowledge about gender exclusion and discrimination as well as encouraging the respect of rights of minorities (Spence, 1993, p. 632).

However, the high sensitivity and politics of gender issues with respect to economic, cultural as well as social inequalities are obstacles to studying gender. In addition, sample participation in gender studies is low; thus, decisive conclusions cannot be made. Future research should focus on understanding the gender roles within social contexts rather than on inequalities.

Major Challenges to Studying Gender

Most scholars studying gender issues focus on gender roles, as opposed to studying the broader gender identity along with its cultural, social, and economic aspects. In particular, social roles of each gender vary across culture; therefore, studies should focus cultural aspects. Stet and Burke study analyses the causes of social oppression against women as well as ways of fighting discrimination (1996, p.210).

In addition, other studies focus on social feminist movements and analyses the causes of feminist political activity as opposed to focusing on the social, cultural and political background of gender disparities. In my view, the ever-increasing interests on gender roles face stiff opposition from cultures, which hamper effective study of gender issues.

Indeed, masculinity and femininity are not only based on sexes but upon cultural and social conditions of an individual. Burke’s study shows that observed differences in social behaviors between women and men result from the cultural and cultural expectations of each gender (1991, p.838).

Traits and temperaments that are normally linked to one sex are, in fact, present in all the sex groups. In addition, far more variability in roles or identities does exist within each gender. Burke’s study concluded that, the “patterns of temperament vary among societies” (1991, p. 841). In most societies, male exhibit active and competitive temperaments while females are more cooperative and expressive.

However, according to Burke and Cast, in some societies the males show cooperative and expressive temperaments while females are more competitive (1997, p. 287). Consequently, their social roles are different compared to other societies. This shows that gender studies should be a function of social and cultural factors. In my view, studying gender should be in the context of the prevailing cultural and social factors in a given society.

Gender studies also face a challenge of defining gender identity in social and cultural contexts. The gender identity phenomenon has many aspects. Certain behaviors, attitudes and attributes are exclusive to either male or female. However, the underlying issue is the society’s view of the qualities of being feminine or masculine.

Culturally, physical attributes, traits, and occupational preferences reflect masculine or feminine gender identities. A study by Burke and Cast established that individuals base their personal qualities on culturally defined gender characteristics to “define themselves as feminine or masculine” (1997, p. 278).

Moreover, gender identities tend to be more variable depending on the internalized behaviors that the individual engages. The behaviors then shape their identities and by extension their social roles (Drass, 1986, p. 301). In this regard, studying gender faces the challenge of defining gender identity in the context of a given culture.

In my opinion, studies should use a multidimensional approach as gender roles relate to gender identities, which are both dependent on social and cultural factors. In addition, gender inequality and underrepresentation in any given society influence gender studies. The politics and gender polarization in contemporary societies, in my view, hampers objectivity in gender studies with regard to political participation and representation in leadership.

In my opinion, future work on gender should focus on how societal institutions including political institutions, religion and economic structures can modify gender identity. Among the greatest challenges of studying gender, is the issue of gender identity in the context of cultural structures.

In this way, socialization can be improved in many social settings. Secondly, gender studies should focus on cross-cultural and sub-cultural differences in order to understand the meaning masculine and feminine roles and identities in the context of that culture. Since such roles or identities are not universal, the studies should provide insights on a society’s division of labor, power structure and responsibilities as well as help to modify the challenges of defining gender identity and roles.

Gender attitudes involve common views associated with an individual’s gender and are variable across cultures. In most cultures, masculine attitudes reflect justice while feminine attitudes in most situations tend to be in terms of care. In particular, the gender-role attitudes shape the gender roles and identities (Spence, 1993, p. 625). By extension, the gender-role attitudes influence the reproductive behaviors, family relationships, and the political participation of each gender in any given society.

Accordingly, children develop their gender-role attitudes from their experiences with social structures including the family and society. From these early experiences, the children identify the appropriate masculine and feminine roles within the society (Drass, 1986, p.298). The gender-role attitudes can be traditional, such as men providing for the family and female caring for children, or untraditional, where roles are assigned based on ability or circumstances regardless of gender. Additionally, the untraditional gender roles differ from culture to culture. As a result, gender attitude studies should be done across cultures, in order to draw meaningful conclusions.

Gender attitude studies conducted involving the Caucasian middle class adults alone cannot be conclusive. Firstly, the studies involve adults instead of children or adolescents whose present gender-role attitudes has an impact upon their roles in adulthood. Secondly, in my opinion, the gender-role attitude studies should involve societies with a history of gender inequality and discrimination. In particular, the studies should involve the African-Americans whose attitudes on gender roles has implications on gender participation in public affairs.

Gender studies in contemporary societies often face challenges from underlying social and cultural factor. Precisely, the gender roles and gender identity are dependent on cultural and political constructs of a particular society. In addition, these factors determine the political participation of either gender and are variable across cultures. In my opinion, studies should focus on understanding the gender roles and identities and how they are shaped by gender-role attitudes across many cultures.

Burke, J. (1991). Identity Processes and Social Stress. American Sociological Review, 56, 836-849.

Burke, J., & Cast, D. (1997). Stability and Change in the Gender Identities of Newly Married Couples. Social Psychology Quarterly, 60, 277-290.

Drass, A. (1986). The Effect of Gender Identity on Conversation. Social Psychology Quarterly, 4 (2), 294-301.

Spence, T. (1993). Gender-Related Traits and Gender Ideology: Evidence for a Multifactorial Theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64 (2), 624-635.

Stet, E., & Burke, J. (1996). Gender, Control, and Interaction. Social Psychology Quarterly, 59, 193-220.

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IvyPanda. (2024, March 1). Gender Studies and Society. https://ivypanda.com/essays/psychology-of-gender/

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IvyPanda . (2024) 'Gender Studies and Society'. 1 March.

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1. IvyPanda . "Gender Studies and Society." March 1, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/psychology-of-gender/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Gender Studies and Society." March 1, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/psychology-of-gender/.

• Temperaments Between Men and Women
• Concepts of Gender Roles
• Gender Role Expectations and Personal Beliefs
• Exploring Factors and Influences in Workplace Conflict
• Sexual Aversion and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
• Communication and Rhetoric by Burke
• Children's Temperament and Personality: Genetic Basis
• Temperament in Child Development
• The Burke Furniture Store Market
• The Dutch Revolt and Edmund Burke Views
• Discrimination, Social Exclusion and Violence among the LGBT Community
• The History of Sexuality
• Gender Balance in Science
• Addressing Issues of Gender and Sexuality
• Some of the Consequences of Colonial Thinking About Aboriginal Women’s Sexuality for Aboriginal Women Themselves

Why I Majored in Gender and Women's Studies

A. ja'nea james ’21.

I am a pre-health student at Pomona. I have been studying the life sciences since high school. And after I graduate from Pomona, I will continue to study and explore the life sciences in medical school. I felt that I should spend my undergraduate years studying something that interested me and that would help me better understand the types of backgrounds my patients would come from. I chose to major in GWS because we learn about the various struggles that many marginalized communities face, as well as how gender plays a role in these struggles. We also examine the theories behind how these struggles manifest themselves, as well as why they exist to begin with, and if these theories are reflective of lived experiences. This would help me understand aspects of being a physician, like why patients do or don’t show up for appointments or why they choose a specific treatment plan, which would in turn help me find the best way to treat them that works with their situations. Overall, I believe that this major will prepare me for the social aspects of becoming a physician by keeping me more aware of the reality of my patients lives outside of the clinic or hospital and how that impacts their decisions, as well as advocate for other patients who feel that their physicians do not listen to them.

I enjoy the elective requirements and the GWS+ track option because they give students in the major a chance to study specific aspects of GWS that they enjoy. I choose to complete many of my electives with classes that pertain to Black feminism and womanism because it is the area of study within this major that I am most interested in. I plan to work closely with Black communities as well as continue to advocate for Black women’s reproductive rights from a physician’s perspective. I believe that these classes teach me about aspects of Black womanhood that I was never very conscious of, and now that I am conscious of it, I have more tools to better help my future patients.  

I am currently working on a project that examines Black motherhood in America. I plan on examining how it is viewed within the Black community as well as how media outlets, older articles, and political campaigns have portrayed it to the rest of America. I also plan on examining how inaccessible femininity is to Black women compared to white women, and how this impacts how black motherhood is portrayed to the rest of America. For my thesis, I hope to explore a similar topic, or how this topic impacts the reproductive rights of Black women.

Calder Hollond ’21

During the first semester of my freshman year, I took Language and Gender as my ID1 [Critical Inquiry seminar] and was introduced to the field of gender studies. This motivated me to start taking more GWS classes, and as I explored the field and loved all my classes, I decided to major. Throughout my Intro to GWS class, I enjoyed learning about foundational theories of the field and applying these theories to issues I am passionate about, like reproductive justice. I love how the foundations that I learn in my GWS classes can be combined with so many other studies, from critical Indigenous studies to environmental justice, to explore and understand different issues. I plan to work in women’s health, so I have focused on the way that GWS helps me consider the interactions of gender, sex, and sexuality with healthcare.

The amazing, tight-knit GWS community has made my major experience thoroughly enjoyable. Students often are concentrating in various other disciplines, and so each student brings a different focus that heightens classes’ exploration of different topics. The faculty is absolutely wonderful, and all the professors are genuinely interested both in the field and in forging connections with students. The department also brings in many important professors and researchers in the field to speak each year, and it’s common to be able to go to a talk by a guest speaker whose articles you have studied in class.

Through my GWS studies, I have had the opportunity to learn about broad topics in the field as well as hone in on certain topics for my papers and research. Last semester in my Queer & Feminist Theory course, I did my final project over creating a syllabus for a hypothetical course on reproductive justice. In doing so, I extensively researched different aspects of the topic, from environmental reproductive justice to reproductive technologies to motherhood and incarceration. As I hope to someday to work in the field of reproductive justice, I thoroughly enjoyed getting to research the topic, and I hope for my thesis to center around reproductive justice.

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[DEADLINE EXTENDED TO 15 APRIL] CFP: CURRENT ISSUES IN GENDER STUDIES

Critical Gender Studies Journal (CGSJ)   is an interdisciplinary (also antidisciplinary), transnational and bilingual platform in English and Spanish for all who are interested in exploring how gender and sexuality shape and are shaped by various social, cultural, historical, and political contexts. It also examines the relationships between gender and sexuality and other facets of identity, including nationality, race, class, ethnicity, religion, and disability. It aims to challenge the assumptions and norms that underlie gender and sexual relations and to promote social justice and equality for all people.

Theme: Current Issues in Gender Studies

The inaugural issue of the  CGSJ  invites submissions that explore the emerging issues in gender studies and calls upon authors to engage with the following concerns:

• How do gender relations and identities shape and are shaped by the multiple transformations that characterize our contemporary societies, such as globalization, migration, digitalization, environmental crisis, social movements, and pandemics?
• How do critical gender studies interrogate and challenge the dominant discourses and practices that reproduce and reinforce gender inequalities and oppressions?
• How do critical gender studies envision and enact alternative and emancipatory visions of gender justice and diversity?

We are particularly interested in submissions that address one or more of the following thrust areas:

• Gender and intersectionality : How do gender and other axes of difference and power, such as race, class, sexuality, disability, religion, and nationality, intersect and interact in various contexts and domains?
• Gender and violence : How do gender and violence relate to each other in different forms and settings, such as domestic violence, sexual violence, hate crimes, armed conflicts, and state violence?
• Gender and media : How do gender and media influence each other in terms of representation, production, consumption, and participation, especially in the age of digital and social media?
• Gender and health : How do gender and health intersect and affect each other in terms of access, quality, outcomes, and policies, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath?
• Gender and work : How do gender and work interact and impact each other in terms of labor market, employment, entrepreneurship, care work, and work-life balance, especially in the face of the changing nature and demands of work?
• Gender and education : How do gender and education relate to each other in terms of access, achievement, curriculum, pedagogy, and empowerment, especially in the context of the global education crisis and the shift to online learning?
• Gender and culture : How do gender and culture shape and are shaped by each other in terms of identity, expression, performance, and resistance, especially in the context of global cultural flows and exchanges?

Languages of Publication: We accept papers written in English & Spanish.

Submission Guidelines:  https://cgsjournal.com/guidelines 

Submission Deadline: 31 March 2024.

University of Notre Dame

Gender Studies Program

College of Arts and Letters

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Graduate Research - Submit GS essays, articles, or chapters for $150 Award consideration

Published: April 03, 2024

Author: Michele Wolff

Submit your writing for the G. Margaret Porter Gender Studies Graduate Writing Awards before noon Friday, April 12: 

• the best graduate student essay written for a course or conference, and
• the best thesis chapter, dissertation chapter, journal article, or book chapter .

These awards are named in honor of G. Margaret Porter , a retired Gender Studies Librarian at the Hesburgh Library who enabled high-caliber research in gender by ensuring that students and faculty had access to the best resources in Gender Studies and include a cash award of $150. 

Submissions for these awards must be written by a Gender Studies graduate minor and must address issues of gender . The maximum length for submissions is 10,000 words (not including references). Research papers from courses and conferences are eligible if completion of the paper occurred no more than 12 months prior to the submission deadline. Journal articles and book chapters can be in draft form, under review, or published.