In this collection of new and previously published essays, Sherry Ortner draws on her more than two decades of work in feminist anthropology to offer a major reconsideration of culture and gender. Making Gender is rich in theoretical insights and ethnographic examples, offering a stimulating synthesis of the field by one of its founders and foremost theorists.

History of sex in the West from the ancients to the moderns by describing the developments in reproductive anatomy and physiology.

"The authors follow the microwave's life trajectory from the design office to the factory and thence to the shops and household. Examining the different jobs women and men do, the different kinds of knowlege they contribute and the unequal importance they are ascribe in the evloution of the microwave, this book shows how technology relations continue to disadvantage women"--Back cover.

The "woman question", this book asserts, is a Western one, and not a proper lens for viewing African society. A work that rethinks gender as a Western contruction, The Invention of Women offers a new way of understanding both Yoruban and Western cultures. Oyewumi traces the misapplication of Western, body-oriented concepts of gender through the history of gender discourses in Yoruba studies. Her analysis shows the paradoxical nature of two fundamental assumptions of feminist theory: that gender is socially constructed in old Yoruba society, and that social organization was determined by relative age.

This “well-researched, nuanced” study of the rise of social media activism explores how marginalized groups use Twitter to advance counter-narratives, preempt political spin, and build diverse networks of dissent (Ms.) The power of hashtag activism became clear in 2011, when #IranElection served as an organizing tool for Iranians protesting a disputed election and offered a global audience a front-row seat to a nascent revolution. Since then, activists have used a variety of hashtags, including #JusticeForTrayvon, #BlackLivesMatter, #YesAllWomen, and #MeToo to advocate, mobilize, and communicate. In this book, Sarah Jackson, Moya Bailey, and Brooke Foucault Welles explore how and why Twitter has become an important platform for historically disenfranchised populations, including Black Americans, women, and transgender people. They show how marginalized groups, long excluded from elite media spaces, have used Twitter hashtags to advance counternarratives, preempt political spin, and build diverse networks of dissent. The authors describe how such hashtags as #MeToo, #SurvivorPrivilege, and #WhyIStayed have challenged the conventional understanding of gendered violence; examine the voices and narratives of Black feminism enabled by #FastTailedGirls, #YouOKSis, and #SayHerName; and explore the creation and use of #GirlsLikeUs, a network of transgender women. They investigate the digital signatures of the “new civil rights movement”—the online activism, storytelling, and strategy-building that set the stage for #BlackLivesMatter—and recount the spread of racial justice hashtags after the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and other high-profile incidents of killings by police. Finally, they consider hashtag created by allies, including #AllMenCan and #CrimingWhileWhite.

Eighteenth-century natural historians created a peculiar, and peculiarly durable, vision of nature--one that embodied the sexual and racial tensions of that era. When plants were found to reproduce sexually, eighteenth-century botanists ascribed to them passionate relations, polyandrous marriages, and suicidal incest, and accounts of steamy plant sex began to infiltrate the botanical literature of the day. Naturalists also turned their attention to the great apes just becoming known to eighteenth-century Europeans, clothing the females in silk vestments and training them to sip tea with the modest demeanor of English matrons, while imagining the males of the species fully capable of ravishing women.

In theory, the EU’s ‘Gender Mainstreaming’ policy should mark it out as a trail-blazer in gender equality, but gender equality activists in Europe confront a knotty problem; most civil servants and policy makers can’t understand how to ‘mainstream’ gender. Making Gender Equality Happen argues that we should take this problem seriously. In this book Cavaghan uncovers the social processes that make gender appear irrelevant to so many policy makers using a new method, gender knowledge contestation analysis. Building on this new perspective Cavaghan identifies: barriers to effective gender mainstreaming; mechanisms of resistance to gender mainstreaming; and the steps towards positive change, which gender mainstreaming can yield, even when results stop short of ‘transformation’. These findings present fresh perspectives for policy makers and activists aiming to make gender equality happen. Cavaghan’s new method also opens fresh avenues in feminist EU studies, which are particularly relevant in the wake of the financial crisis, as the EU seems to be stepping away from its commitments to gender equality.