Gender: In World Perspective

Citation

Connell, R., & Bridges, T. (2026). Gender: In World Perspective (5th ed.). Polity.

Chapter Summary

The fifth edition is a short book of about 216 pages in Polity's "Short Introductions" series, with a preface, eight chapters, an afterword, references and an index. The publisher describes it as an accessible introduction that covers empirical research from around the world as well as theory and politics, and that moves from personal experience to global problems. New to this edition are an updated statistical picture of gender inequalities, new close-focus case studies, and added discussion of intersectionality, populism and "anti-gender" politics, gender-based violence, trans struggles and environmental change. The summaries below rest on the table of contents and the publisher's description.

Chapter 1: The Question of Gender

The opening chapter takes up "noticing gender amidst global backlash", then turns to understanding and defining gender. It is the place where the authors set out the terms for the rest of the book.

Chapter 2: Gender Research: Five Examples

Five case studies show gender research in practice, each tied to a country: gender in high school in the United States; empire, feminism and race in Colombia; violence, young men and masculinity in Australia; the hijra of South India; and refugee women and culture in Turkey and Syria. The chapter offers concrete studies before the theory arrives.

Chapter 3: Sex Differences and Gendered Bodies

This chapter looks at sexual reproduction and difference, asks whether differences are explained by nature, culture or both, and reviews sex-similarities research. It ends with social embodiment in the reproductive arena, a theme that the publisher also lists in its summary of the book's attention to embodied gender.

Chapter 4: Theory and Theorists: A Short Global History

The chapter opens with Raden Ajeng Kartini and moves through imperial Europe and its colonies, "from Sigmund to Simone", and from national liberation to women's liberation. It then covers the realignments around queer, intersectional and environmental thinking, and global politics and postcolonial knowledge. The title and sections indicate a history of gender theory told across regions, not only from the metropolitan centres.

Chapter 5: Gender Relations

This is the conceptual core of the book. It presents gender as a social structure, discusses intersectionality, and describes four dimensions of gender relations: power, economic, emotional and symbolic. It ends with crisis tendencies and change. The publisher's blurb refers to the multidimensional character of gender relations as a central idea.

Chapter 6: Personal Life

The chapter considers how gender is made through socialisation theory and depth psychology, then gender identity, social embodiment and change in gender relations, gender projects and active learning, and gender transitions and trans groups. It links the personal level to the structural account of Chapter 5.

Chapter 7: Work, Economy and Globalization

Topics include gendered labour, gendered corporations and markets, the "gender equality paradox", feminist theory on the gendered economy, and globalization and gender.

Chapter 8: Gender Politics

The final chapter looks at movements in gender politics, gendered states and governance, gender politics on a world scale, digital politics (backlash and counter-publics) and the idea of moving toward gender democracy. A short afterword follows.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–3

• Gender as a topic of research: the chapters define gender and then test the definition against five cases.
• Sex similarities research: the review of evidence that compares women and men, set beside accounts of difference.
• Social embodiment: the idea of bodies as part of social processes, introduced in the reproductive arena.

Chapters 4–6

• Gender as a social structure: the framing of gender relations in Chapter 5.
• Intersectionality: named in both the Chapter 5 contents and the publisher's new material.
• Four dimensions of gender relations: power, economic, emotional and symbolic relations.
• Gender projects: the term used in Chapter 6 for how people take part in making their own gender.

Chapters 7–8

• Gender equality paradox: a puzzle in the sociology of work named in Chapter 7.
• Gender democracy: the direction toward which Chapter 8 points.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Compact and global. At roughly 216 pages the book gives a full path from definitions through theory to politics, while its five opening case studies come from the United States, Colombia, Australia, India and Turkey and Syria.
• A clear structural framework. Chapter 5 sets out four dimensions of gender relations, which gives the reader a way to organise evidence from the case studies and from the later chapters on work, personal life and politics.
• Linked scales. The publisher stresses showing how personal life connects with large-scale organisational structures, and the sequence from personal life (Chapter 6) to economy (Chapter 7) to politics (Chapter 8) follows that plan.
• Up to date. The new material on populism, anti-gender politics, trans struggles, gender-based violence and environmental change addresses current debates.

Limitations

• Brevity. In a short introduction, a chapter such as the history of theory (Chapter 4) has little room to treat each tradition in depth, so students will need other texts for detailed accounts.
• Not a primary-source anthology. Theorists such as Kartini, Freud and Beauvoir are discussed in the history chapter, but the book does not reproduce their writing.
• No exercises in the listed contents. The sources do not mention study questions or activities, so teachers must supply their own.

Where It Fits in the Course

Within the gender and sexuality list, this is a short first introduction. Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions by Wade and Ferree is a fuller textbook that organises gender at three levels and pays sustained attention to intersectionality, so it suits a course that wants a longer, classroom-style text. Weeks's Sexuality is a separate short introduction to the study of sexuality.

Connell's own Masculinities develops one strand, masculinity as a configuration of practice, in depth, and Butler's Gender Trouble and Collins's Black Feminist Thought are major works that the history in Chapter 4 and the intersectionality discussion prepare the reader to approach. Read Connell and Bridges first for orientation, then choose the specialised works.

How to Use This Book

No prior study of gender or sociology is needed. The book is short enough to read in a few sittings.

A suggested order: read Chapters 1 and 5 first for the framework, then Chapter 2 for the case studies, which show how the framework is applied. Chapters 3 and 6 suit readers interested in bodies, identity and personal life; Chapters 7 and 8 suit those interested in economy and politics. Chapter 4 works best after one or two of the others, when the names it mentions have some context. Alongside the book, choose one of the five case studies in Chapter 2 and look up the research behind it, and read one longer work from the course list on a topic that caught your interest.