Description: In this innovative book, a well-known feminist and sociologist-who is also the founding editor of Gender & Society-challenges our most basic assumptions about gender. Judith Lorber argues that gender is wholly a product of socialization, subject to human agency, organization, and interpretation, and that it is a social institution comparable to the economy, the family, and religion in its significance and consequences. Calling into question the inevitability and necessity of gender, she envisions a society structured for equality, where no gender, racial ethnic, or social class group is allowed to monopolize positions of power.
Review Quotes:
"A brilliant, compelling, and timely analysis of gender from a critical feminist perspective."--Patricia Yancey Martin, The Ohio State University
"An extraordinary book that will become a classic. It is impossible to read this book and not rethink gender."--Barbara Katz Rothman, Baruch College
"With remarkable intellectual breadth, Judith Lorber probes a series of paradoxes to theorize about gender as an all-encompassing social institution. This inclusive and compelling book will transform our thinking about society as well as women and men."--Maxine Baca Zinn, Michigan State University
"That gender is one of the central axes around which social life revolves (like race or class) has become a social science truism. But Judith Lorber goes further in this deeply thoughtful work. Lorber claims gender is a central social institution, analogous to the state or the market. Wide-ranging, provocative, and eloquently argued, Paradoxes of Gender is one of those rare works that define a field."--Michael Kimmel, Associate Professor, SUNY at Stony Brook