The Gendered Society - Softcover

Kimmel, Michael S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195125886 ISBN 13: 9780195125887

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2000

Synopsis

The Gendered Society examines current thinking about gender, both inside academia and in our everyday lives. Through an examination of current work in biology, anthropology, psychology, and sociology (in Part I), an original analysis of the gendered worlds of family, education, and work (in Part II), and the gendered interactions of friendship and love, sexuality, and violence (in Part III), Kimmel makes three claims about gender. First, he argues that the differences between men and women are not as great as we often imagine, and that in fact women and men have far more in common with one another than we think they do. Second, he challenges the notions of many pop psychologists who suggest that gender difference is the cause of the dramatic observable inequality between the sexes. Instead, Kimmel reveals that the reverse is true: gender inequality is the cause of the differences between women and men. Third, Kimmel argues that gender is not simply an aspect of individual identity but is also an institutional phenomenon, embedded in the organizations and institutions in which we interact daily. Kimmel concludes with a brief Epilogue looking ahead to gender relations in the new century. The Gendered Society is a well-reasoned, authoritative, and keenly animated statement about gender relations today, written by one of the country's foremost thinkers on the subject. It is an essential text for both scholars and students alike. Kimmel's companion book, The Gendered Society Reader (OUP, 1999), provides a perfect complement for classroom use.

About this title

About the Author

Michael S. Kimmel, Professor, Department of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook.

Review

"Readers curious about what it means to say we live in a gendered society but confused by the trendy mixture of pop psychology, neo-Darwinism, and Mars-Venus theories will value this well-reasoned study. Sociologist Kimmel...demolishes 'fictitious pseudoscientific claims,' misunderstandings and myths, organizing his analysis around difference (how different are men and women) and dominance (how are gender difference and gender inequality related)."--Booklist

"Kimmel aims to unsettle the masculine and feminine ideals that confine us to gendered codes of proper and improper behavior by emphasizing the wide range of behaviors that men and women share; and, perhaps more crucially, he endeavors to expose the gendered society as the source rather than the effect of gender difference."--The Boston Book Review

"An engaging, intelligent, and blessedly readable book about the status of gender politics today."--The Trenton Times

"This is a current look at a topic which is of genuine importance. The author does a fine job in presenting the material in a fashion that is very readable. I shall consider it when next I teach my course."--Robert Langran, Villanova University

"At last! A summary work of decades of recent scholarship on gender which sifts through the huge amount of accumulated data, judiciously weighs the evidence and brings immense clarity and insight to the major areas of contention. I cannot imagine anyone who would not profit from reading this scrupulous, comprehensive, incisive book."-Martin Duberman, Distinguished Professor of History, Graduate Center, City University of New York and the author of Paul Robeson and Left Out: The Politics of Exclusion

"The Gendered Society is a compendium of knowledge, theory, and fact about gender that is by far the best and most comprehensive book on the subject. In refreshingly jargon-free prose, Professor Kimmel offers a penetrating and subtle examination of how the gender difference and inequality that are so much a part of everyday life are socially structured and maintained in both our public and our personal lives."-Lillian B. Rubin, author of The Transcendent Child

"In this important and lively book, Michael Kimmel explodes myths about the 'natural' bases of gender distinctions in society. With careful analysis and thorough research The Gendered Society is a major antidote to pop psychologists who claim men and women come from different planets and 'don't understand' each other."--Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Graduate Center, City University of New York and Author of Deceptive Distinctions

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0195125886
• ISBN 13: 9780195125887
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336