Complicating Gender

Reviews the volume by Forden and Hunter (see record 2002-17256-000), which contains a series of articles addressing a broad range of topics within the psychology of gender. This book seems most appropriate undergraduate students to be used as a reader to accompany textbooks for courses in feminist psychology. Readers are exposed to many specific issues, such as male circumcision, absent fathers, and maternal substance abuse, which they would not otherwise encounter in traditional textbooks, in addition to mainstream topics. Overall, this collection has many strengths. The editors and contributing authors succeed at demonstrating that gendered behavior is fluid, and multiply determined. It is refreshing to read a supplemental textbook whose goal is to address the myriad ways that men and women are both alike as well as different. Most important, this collection illustrates that the experience of gender varies by an individual's ethnicity, age, and sexual orientation. This book is very much of the same high quality as many other current supplemental texts on the psychology of women or gender. Weaknesses identified here revolve primarily around the way the collection is framed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)