Overview of Feminist Perspectives on Sex and Gender

Abstract

This chapter is an overview of feminist debates on sex and gender. The chapter distinguishes between sex and gender; examines the biological determinism perspective on feminism; discusses perspectives on the socialisation process; discusses the problems with the gender / sex distinction; and examines the controversy in understanding the category women. Western feminists use gender as the explanatory model to account for women's subordination and oppression worldwide; Black and other oppressed races in the West insist that there is no way that gender can be considered outside of race and class; and sisters in Africa have taken the discussion further, taking cognisance of imperialism, colonization, and other local and global forms of stratification which lend weight to the assertion that gender cannot be abstracted from the social context and other systems of hierarchy. Because gender works in a complicated interconnection with other abusive power systems, some women enjoy more power than some men.