Editorial Foreword: Sociology and Gender

As we were assembling this issue one theme that stood out in several of the arti-cles was that of gender. In line with our usual practice we try to publish papers in order of acceptance, so articles collected in an issue typically have acceptance dates within a few months of each other. (There are exceptions of course: for example, we try to publish responses in a timely way, and occasionally we will move a paper forward if it seems to fit especially well with another.) Looking at the queue of papers in production for issue 42(3) the subject of gender seemed particularly prominent. Gender is a core interest for sociology. It is one of the concepts that lends itself well to defining sociological interest: while the basis for differences between sexes is biological and genetic, gender differences are social and cul-tural (and one might add, psychological) and thus open to sociological analy-sis. It is interesting to reflect that gender has not, however, always been a central concern for sociology. In her 1993 essay in Morgan and Stanley’s edited collection looking back over 25 years ’ of debates in sociology, Janet Finc