These essays cover the major theoretical debates about the nature of female and male identity. The book offers a variety of analyses of gender in the context of different forms of social and cultural activity. Each section is preceded by a summary and description of the articles concerned.

Gender studies has become one of the core fields in the social sciences and humanities. As a result of the struggles of feminists, women are no longer hidden from history or unacknowledged in social research or cultural analysis. Over recent years, again largely because of the influence of feminism, masculinity has also increasingly been made problematic and opened up to scrutiny. Gender is thereby recognised to be central to the analysis of structures of power, the organization of social and cultural institutions, and modes of ideological control in modern societies.