Telling Gender’s Fortune: International Experts Explore What the Future Holds

Abstract

In this book, a group of international experts presents multiple perspectives on what the future holds for the concept of gender. Drawing on such domains as sociology, political science, economics, developmental psychology, evolutionary psychology, and gender studies, this collection of essays provides the reader with multifaceted and, at times, diverging viewpoints on how gender should be reconceptualized, the major issues pertaining to gender justice, and future directions for public policy. Some argue that gender is an outdated idea; for example, the concept of gender is argued by one author as no longer a useful construct because the lines have blurred between the concepts of “woman” and “man” as persons who identify as transgendered, transsexual, and intersex have received greater recognition. Others argue for the utility of gender as a concept, because it allows us to perceive and protest issues of gender discrimination or to value the different ways in which women and men contribute to society.