Gender Relations

Gender relations does not refer to women and men, but to the social relationships between them. Gender relations examines the relative position of men and women in the division of resources and responsibilities, benefits and rights, power and privilege. Thus, the use of gender relations as an analytical category shifts the focus away from viewing women in isolation from men. Men and women have closely related to one another in history: men and women are in crucial ways subject to one another, are necessarily interconnected, so that throughout one’s life she/he participates in a gender system (or systems) of giving and taking in a sequence of negotiations. Gender relations permeate every single aspect of our social, political and economic life and vary across time, culture and are not fixed or immutable. Gender relations analysis is indeed a systematic approach for assessing and understanding the different impacts of historical development on women and men because of their different gender roles.