ABSTRACT
Gender is the social construction of sexual difference. It concerns the features that different societies ascribe to individuals, and to objects, processes and behaviours, based upon perceptions of differences between the sexes. Gender is a social rather than a biological construction, and it has a history. Most, though not all, historical work has a diachronic emphasis while much social science, including economic analysis, is present-centred and/or synchronic. It is thus the case that historical work raises issues about gender that may be much less obvious to economists, and other social scientists, than to historians.
