ABSTRACT
Sociologist Ken Plummer describes gender as ‘the surest of all ideas in the modern world and at the same time one of the most contested concepts in the social sciences’. Sex and gender are often used interchangeably, giving the impression that they are different words for expressing the same thing. Students routinely include ‘gender differences’ in their projects without questioning if it makes sense. Pop-psychology upholds this view, by encouraging us to think of men and women as so different that they are from different planets. Academic psychology has been slow to challenge this, as social psychologist Mary Crawford contends that the Mars/Venus books and workshops gained legitimacy through advertising in academic journals. Psychology offers a means to test the assumptions of everyday understanding. Sometimes it confirms ‘common sense’, and at other times it offers a radically different view. The chapter presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
