ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the sex/gender category-systems, discovering how sex/gender diversity is related to differences in bodies, sexualities, identities, and other issues. It focuses on the conventional binary of male-versus-female and talks about men and masculinity, which are every bit as socially constructed as women and femininity. In Western societies men and women have historically been judged as somewhat or highly unequal, with women occupying a status of inferiority and dependence. Young unmarried women were generally under the authority of their fathers, and marriage transferred that authority to their husbands. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, America was undergoing traumatic social change, and many opportunities opened for women to act more freely. Urbanization and industrialization gave young women access to money, the world outside the family, and an emerging youth culture. The right of women to vote began to gain political traction in the 1880s, with a women’s suffrage amendment debated but defeated in the US Senate in 1886.
