The Gendered Society

The sixth edition of The Gendered Society explores current thinking about gender, both inside academia and in our everyday lives. Michael Kimmel challenges the claim that gender is limited to women's experiences--his compelling and balanced study of gender includes both masculine and feminine perspectives.

Kimmel makes three bold and persuasive statements about gender. First, he demonstrates that gender differences are often extremely exaggerated; in fact, he argues that men and women have much more in common than we think they do. Kimmel also challenges the pop psychologists who suggest that gender difference is the cause of inequality between the sexes; instead, he reveals that the reverse is true-gender inequality itself is the cause of the differences between men and women. Finally, he illustrates that gender is not merely an element of individual identity, but a socially constructed institutional phenomenon.

Michael Kimmel is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University, The State University of New York. A leading researcher and writer on gender and men and masculinity, he is the author or editor of numerous books and articles including The Gendered Society Reader, Sixth Edition (with Amy Aronson, OUP, 2016), Sexualities: Identities, Behaviors, and Society, Second Edition (with The Stony Brook Sexualities Research Group, OUP, 2014), and Manhood in America: A Cultural History, Third Edition (OUP, 2011).

Preface

Chapter 1: Introduction: Human Beings: An Engendered Species

PART 1: Explanations of Gender

Chapter 2: Ordained by Nature: Biology Constructs the Sexes
Chapter 3: Spanning the World: Culture Constructs Gender Difference
Chapter 4: "So, That Explains It": Psychoanalytic and Development Perspectives on Gender
Chapter 5: The Social Construction of Gender Relations

PART 2: Gendered Identities, Gendered Institutions

Chapter 6: The Gendered Family
Chapter 7: The Gendered Classroom
Chapter 8: Gender and Religion
Chapter 9: Separate and Unequal: The Gendered World of Work
Chapter 10: The Gender of Politics and the Politics of Gender
Chapter 11: The Gendered Media

PART 3: Gendered Interactions

Chapter 12: Gendered Intimacies: Friendship and Love
Chapter 13: The Gendered Body
Chapter 14: The Gender of Violence

Epilogue: "A Degendered Society?"

Notes
Sources for Chapter Opening Art
Index