Learning About Women: Gender, Politics and Power

In the last twenty-five years many different strands of scholarly inquiry have converged to produce a more complex understanding of gender as a cultural phenomenon. Today we see the social boundaries established by gender patterns as varying historically and across cultures yet also serving as fundamental components of any social system. The fact of living in a world shared by two sexes may be interpreted in an infinite variety of ways; these interpretations and the patterns they create operate at both the social and individual levels. In this volume, essays by leading scholars explore these interpretations and provide an introduction to feminist inquiry and theory.