ABSTRACT
There is a difference between a concept – theorised but uninstitutionalised, advanced but still in motion – and a more fixed and furnished category of analysis. Even as a concept, 'gender' has been the subject of almost continuous debate in the field of women's and gender history. Dispensing with the overarching category might encourage us to set aside the historically unproductive insistence on the primary-ness of gender and focus instead on the complex fabric of processes and meanings that constitute a social or cultural history. Understanding that gender is not a single, named process should also enable us to examine more carefully the extent to which and the ways in which gender is a language about power in a given society. Deploying gender as a category of analysis disguises this process of reciprocal constitution and implies for gender an independent quasi-scientific causal status.
