Social Studies of Gender: A Next Wave Reader invites students to critically examine the use of and assumptions about sex and gender while studying the various areas in which gender analysis is conducted. The reader features a collection of diverse articles that approach the study of gender, sex, and gender discrimination from a variety of perspectives. These various approaches underscore the richness in the field as well as diverging theories about the basis of gender difference.

The opening chapter introduces readers to the variety of ways social and behavioral scientists have studied and understood sex and gender in recent decades. Additional chapters are divided into two distinct sections. Part I is dedicated to theorizing gender and sexuality as fields of inquiry. Students read about gender regulations, gender as research, contemporary sexuality, and the politics of sexuality. In Part II, inequalities related to gender and sex are explored. The readings cover gender within the family and workplace, the gendered nature of science and technology, intimacy and violence, views of masculinity, sex education, and more.

Enlightening and timely, Social Studies of Gender is an ideal textbook for courses in gender and sexuality studies, social research, and sociology.

Christine V. Wood is a research assistant professor of medical social sciences within the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Trained in the sociology of knowledge and science, she has written on the organizational cultures of biomedicine and the institutionalization of gender studies in the United States. As a medical sociologist, she is currently working on a federally funded, qualitative longitudinal study of career opportunities among biomedical scientists, a project which addresses the persistent lack of racial and gender diversity in the upper realms of academic science.