Looking for the Body in Sociological Literature on Gender

This study explores the place of the body in sociological literature on gender. It surveys gender scholarship from the years 1973, 1987 and 2001 in three mainstream sociological journals - American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, and Social Forces - to analyze whether and in what ways the body is analyzed, avoided or dismissed. The findings indicate that conceptual shifts theorized by the broader community of gender scholars, particularly those who argue that the relationship between sex and gender and the social construction of sex need to be attended to in gender scholarship, have not significantly influenced mainstream sociological work on gender. Yet these conceptual challenges to dominant understandings of sex and gender have important implications for the discipline as a whole