Gender is routinely used to sort people, explain behaviour, and organise social life — often standing in for biology, history, and power all at once. But what does the concept really do, and where does it break down?

How closely does gender track sex, how does it operate within changing family structures and demographic shifts, and what role does it play in contemporary accounts of inequality, injustice, and political strategy?

This volume brings together scholars from political philosophy, sociology, economics, law, psychoanalysis, and evolutionary psychology to test the limits of gender as an analytic tool. Rather than offering a unified framework, the essays expose disagreement: over definition, over usefulness, and over whether “gender” can still carry the explanatory weight placed upon it.

The result is a serious examination of whether — and how — the concept can be rethought for the future.