Gender and Feminist Theorising

Abstract

The term gender entered sociological discourse as a way of conceptualising male-female differences at the end of the 1960s (Stoller 1968), a product of the rise of the women’s liberation movement — feminism’s second wave. Since then the value and meaning of the concept has been widely contested amongst feminists, sociologists and other academics. Some feminists have, for instance, argued that attention to gender and gender relations can lead to a denial of women’s oppression and ‘excludes and silences many women’ (Jackson 1992: 31). The category of gender, they contend, is more neutral and academically acceptable than that of woman, for which it often serves as a substitute (see Scott 1986: 1056). Its use depoliticises the feminist project. In the mental health field, therefore, the need is for studies of women and mental disorder, not of gender and mental disorder. Similarly the burgeoning work on men and masculinity during the last five to ten years (Hearn 1987; Hearn and Morgan 1990; Segal 1990; Morgan 1992), might equally be taken to require separate studies of men and mental disorder. Furthermore, even those who argue that any adequate analysis must incorporate both women and men, do not agree that gender is the most appropriate concept to employ, some preferring the older concept of sex, rather than the more recent term gender.

‘Gender’ means practice organised in terms of, or in relation to, the reproductive division of people into male and female (Connell 1987: 140).