In this introductory article we provide a contextual theoretical framework of feminist debates and movements through the lens of the Journal of Gender Studies over the course of the past quarter of a century. Attention to the processes by which we become gendered, and the mechanisms and meanings within society whereby it maintains structures of gender inequality, requires attention to the lives of women and men. It also requires that we pay attention to the lives of people who cross such categories or fit uneasily within them. All this can and should be done while retaining a feminist sensibility and sensitivity to the workings of power and privilege in the individual and social articulations of gendered difference, and the putting of knowledge to work to achieve positive change. Here we review the ways in which the Journal has and continues to make critically important contributions to this ongoing project
