Gender

Abstract

New from the Routledge Major Works programme, this landmark title is a four-volume collection of canonical and the very best cutting-edge research on gender. Taking gender to mean both the forms of identity which follow biological definitions of sex (the social identities of male and female, masculine and feminine), as well as the social and intimate relations which are constructed and defined through gender, serious work in the field is inevitably very wide-ranging, and draws on scholarship and insights from across the humanities, the social sciences, and beyond. Much of this literature remains inaccessible, or is highly specialized and compartmentalized, so that it is ever more difficult to gain an informed and comprehensive overview of the current and historical issues and debates. The sheer scale of the growth in research output in gender—as well as its breadth—makes this collection especially useful and meets the demand for a one-stop 'mini library' of this endlessly fascinating and fundamental subject. The editor (founder of the European Journal of Women’s Studies), Mary Evans, is one of the field’s leading scholars. She has written new introductions, both to each volume, and to the collection as a whole, which place the collected material in its historical and intellectual context. Gender is an essential collection destined to be valued by scholars and students as a vital research resource