Gender is a complex element of social and cultural existence with far-reaching implications for the course of our lives. It shapes the work we do and how we spend our leisure time, our income, our family relationships and friendships, the value and meanings we attach to other people and activities, what we eat and how we dress, and even how we speak and move. In the last few decades, theoretical and everyday notions of gender have undergone dramatic changes, influenced both by changes in the organisation of society and by a rapidly expanding field of critical inquiry. This new field of inquiry concerns broad questions of difference - race, class and sexuality, for example, as well as gender. It is at the forefront of significant critical and theoretical developments in the Social Sciences and Humanities.