Gender and Society

This course explores the sociology of gender as it shapes everyday life, social institutions, and the world around us. You will be encouraged to rethink familiar ideas about gender, sex, and identity, and to consider how gender operates as a powerful organising force in contemporary society. Drawing on sociological perspectives, the course offers space to reflect on lived experience alongside wider social debates.

Across the course, you will explore key discussions around gender, including its historical development, the relationship between sex and gender, and the influence of feminism. You will also consider how gender is learned, embodied, and experienced through work, family life, and cultural expectations. Particular attention is given to intersecting inequalities, showing how gender interacts with race, class, sexuality, and global power structures, as well as perspectives that move beyond Western understandings of gender.

Each week, we will cover a topic pertinent to understanding gender in society:

Week 1: Gender and Society: The Gendered Society

Week 2: A brief history of gender, sex, and the rise of feminism

Week 3: The sexed body? The gendered mind?

Week 4: The Second Shift: Gender, Work, and the family home

Week 5: Intersectionality: Intersecting Inequalities

Week 6: Gender beyond Woman, Gender beyond the West

By the end of the course, you should be able to:

• Understand in more detail how gender functions as a central ordering principle in contemporary society.

• Develop a stronger framework for thinking about gender and its complexities.

• Engage more confidently and precisely with issues of gendered inequality in social, professional and everyday contexts.

• This course is suitable for anyone interested in understanding gender more deeply, particularly if you are navigating gendered workplaces or engaging with issues such as care, family life, violence, reproduction, or equality initiatives.

Join the course and explore how gender shapes the world.