Introduction

Abstract

The central proposition of this historical work is that gender matters. Gender matters in the lives of individuals. We experience our lives filtered through the lens of gender norms and gender roles. We understand ourselves as gendered beings. Gender matters in our relations to others—whether in our personal or public lives, as mothers, fathers, workers, or employers—and structures our place in relation to others. It provides one lens through which we experience, interpret, appreciate, and judge the nature, the character, and the meaning of our relations to others. While gender matters most obviously in relations between men and women, and many would in fact argue that relations between men and women create gender itself, it is a proposition of this study that gender matters as much across the racial and class lines of the social order as it does between men and women of the same race and class. Altogether, gender matters in the myriad ways that it constructs individuals’ sense of themselves and their place in the social order; in the way that it serves as one frame of social relations across the social landscape, from the most personal and intimate relations of the family to the most public and anonymous relations of the workplace or urban life. Gender matters in the way that society develops, is experienced, is transformed by individuals and groups acting out of their gendered identity, and social relations based on that identity.1KeywordsGender IdentitySocial OrderGender RelationRace PositionRacial HierarchyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.