Breaking the Bowls: Degendering and Feminist Change

In Breaking the Bowls, the sequel to Paradoxes of Gender, Judith Lorber shows the cracks, anomalies, and resistances that are breaking down the gendered social order in Western post-industrial societies and lays out how we can take this process further by deliberate degendering.

Lorber argues that it is time to rebel against gender as a social institution—to challenge its basic processes and practices. Feminists have tried to restructure and change the dynamics of interaction between women and men, but they have not pushed their agenda to the point of calling for the abolition of gender boundaries and categories. Breaking the Bowls explores why undoing gender must be the ultimate feminist goal and how that goal can be reached.

Breaking the Bowls is part of the Contemporary Societies series.

In Breaking the Bowls, the sequel to Paradoxes of Gender, Judith Lorber shows the cracks, anomalies, and resistances that are breaking down the gendered social order in Western post-industrial societies and lays out how we can take this process further by deliberate degendering.

Judith Lorber, an international scholar in gender studies, is professor emerita of sociology and women’s studies at Brooklyn College and the Graduate School, City University of New York. She is the author of Paradoxes of Gender; Gender Inequality: Feminist Theories and Politics; Gender and the Social Construction of Illness; Women Physicians: Careers, Status and Power; and many articles on gender. She is the founding editor of Gender & Society and received the American Sociological Association Jessie Bernard Career Award for her contributions to feminist scholarship.