ABSTRACT
There is something seductive about talking about ‘the nature of..'.. Every week, it seems, there are articles in the press about ‘the nature of women’ (or of men), and attempts to find ‘the key’ to gender differences. Such articles generally search for the elusive and essentialist ‘nature’ either in the realm of ‘biological facts’ or in anthropological data about peoples presumed to be somehow more natural. Yet, as Defining Females makes so clear, neither ‘nature’ nor ‘biological facts’ can be presumed innocent of social and cultural definition; nor, indeed, of social and cultural effects.
