SUGU
Gender

Summary/Abstract: This article undertakes to outline briefly the history of gender studies as an interdisciplinary cluster of fields over the last 30 years, focusing on academic research in European and North America, sketched into global contexts. Three orienting problematics that have undergirded much of the enduring research are discussed, foregrounding examples from the fields of history and philosophy: First, theoretical approaches to differences have centred on concepts of sex and gender and the (synergic and contestatory) relations of multiple categories of difference. Second, a shift from a compensatory approach of filling in the blanks with „missing women” to „gender”, along with the discussion of „gender as a useful analytic category” began in the 1970s, and led to decisive formulations of the object of gender research as „the social relation between the sexes”, a perspective that continues to animate much current research activity, with continuously expanding empirical directions worldwide. Thirdly, the hypothesis of „separate spheres” has led gradually to more complex and pervasive discussions of gendered negotiations between „public and private”. The article ends with a discussion of a fourth research direction, body and sexuality, and of the continuing pertinence and the status of radical epistemological critiques in philosophy of science that continue to challenge disciplinary configurations in the humanities and the rhetoric of research.

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