Gender, Sex, and Power

All societies are organized around gender and sexuality. Everywhere, the sex/gender system has implications for the relative power of men and women in society. Human societies have a tendency toward patriarchy. Some societies are relatively gender-egalitarian. Others are strongly patriarchal. But none are strongly matriarchal. This module examines the social, cultural, psychological and biological arguments, including feminist and non-feminist theories for how and why sex and gender relate to the distribution of power in society? It examines these questions in terms of broad comparison across cultures, in evolutionary history, in modern state societies and in today’s transnational, globalizing world.