Unconscious attitudes and beliefs about women and men

Abstract

In the last four decades, analyses of gender have produced entirely new fields of study and created deep transformations in traditional disciplines of scholarly inquiry. Whatever their orientation, these analyses share a recognition of historically prevalent inequities that place sharp limits on women’s access to knowledge, power, and wealth. Among social scientists, examinations of such inequities have shaped the debate about gender differences and assumptions that difference (actual or assumed) implies the superiority of what is male, or at least that what is male is normative.