Gender in History

A concise yet comprehensive account of the roles and influences of gender over the millennia, featuring new and updated content throughout  

Gender in History: Global Perspectives, Third Edition, explores the construction and evolution of gender in many of the world’s cultures from the Paleolithic era to the COVID pandemic of the twenty-first century. Broad in geographic and topical scope, this comprehensive volume discusses the ways families, religions, social hierarchies, politics, work, education, art, sexuality, and other issues are linked to various conceptions of gender. 

Now organized chronologically rather than topically, this extensively revised edition presents a wealth of up-to-date information based on the scholarship of the last decade. New and expanded chapters offer insights on the connections between gender and key events and trends in world history, including domestication and the development of agriculture, the growth of cities and larger-scale political structures, the spread of world religions, changing ideas of race, class, and sexuality, colonialism and imperialism, capitalism, wars, revolutions, and more. Written by a distinguished scholar in the field of women's and gender history, this third edition of Gender in History: 

• Examines how gender roles were shaped by family life, religious traditions, various other institutions, and how the institutions were influenced by gender 
• Considers why gender variations developed in different cultures and in diverse social, ethnic, and racial groups within a single culture 
• Addresses ideas in different cultures that shaped both informal societal norms and formalized laws 
• Explores debates about the origins of patriarchy, the development of complex gender hierarchies, and contemporary movements for social change 
• Discusses the gender implications of modern issues including the global pandemic and ongoing cultural and economic shifts 
• Includes an accessible introduction to key theoretical and methodological issues and an instructor’s website site with visual and written original sources  

Gender in History: Global Perspectives, Third Edition, is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students in courses such as those on women’s history, women in world history, and gender in world history, and a valuable supplement for general survey courses within History and Women’s and Gender Studies programs. 

MERRY E. WIESNER-HANKS is Distinguished Professor of History and Women’s and Gender Studies Emerita, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA. She is an esteemed historian whose work has been central to the integration of women, gender, and sexuality into the study of early modern Europe and World/Global History. She is the long-time Senior Editor of the Sixteenth Century Journal and author or editor of thirty books and many articles that have been published in numerous languages.