Publisher's Synopsis
This book is about gender past, present and future in four volumes. Volume 1, after giving some necessary background information about gender and how it differs from sex, considers the possible origins of gender in pre-historic communities. It then goes on to track the development of gender historically. Volume 2 is a discussion of contemporary views of gender, as revealed in institutional practices, activist ideologies, research surveys, including the author's, and in academic theories of gender. Volume 3 reviews the activities and ideologies of those groups and institutions which loosen the bonds of gender constraining thoughts, feelings and behaviour. The various categories of individuals which buck prevailing conceptions of gender, and mainstream reactions to them, are considered. In Volume 4, social forces for gender stasis and change, ideological, institutional and interpersonal are considered. How a future society without gender might result, and what it would be like, is the subject of the final part of the book
