Gender studies

Stina Lyon on the personal and emotional costs of a global marketplace where everything’s for sale

Lucy Wooding reviews an analysis of the culture of early modern England

Annmarie Adams on one man’s quest to find places where form meets libido

Female scholars talk candidly about their experiences of combining an academic career with child-rearing

Shahidha Bari welcomes a thoughtful look at ordinary anatomy and extraordinary anxiety

Hilary Hinds praises an account of the social shifts discerned in small ads, smooching and soulmates

Gwendolyn Beetham on a collection of essays that remind us that an alternative to global capitalism’s inequality is badly needed

Annmarie Adams on the architecture of buildings with ‘controversial’ uses

Peter Gwyn seeks more interpretation in a biography of the Virgin Queen and her male favourites and Ladies of the Bedchamber

Colin Higgins on Victorian women writers and poets who thrived, or not, in the atmosphere of the Round Reading Room

Bryony Randall lauds an insightful and overdue study of literary representations of parenting

A better gender balance in government benefits all, Sylvia Walby observes

Mary Evans relishes this re-evaluation of an installation artwork that depicts a collection of famous women

Shelley King on asking questions, realist fiction and female subjectivity in Victorian novels

Susan Hogan on a challenge to analyses of 19th-century politics that marginalise the role of women

A study of la petite mort focuses on cultural views not sociological explorations, finds Sally R. Munt

Shahidha Bari considers an exploration of desire and denial amid Egypt’s shifting sands

Mary Evans discusses moral panic and girls’ sexualisation

Hera Cook on a study of young Californian women’s thoughts on gender and sexuality

A close-focus study of Arab schooling calls Western views into question, writes Carine Allaf

The man-woman pairing displaced other well-established forms of bonding, finds Robert Mills

Renowned feminist writer Sheila Rowbotham talks to Matthew Reisz about writing from her own experience and imagining what it is like to be inside a homosexual man's body

Lynne Segal on a study of sex behind bars that exposes enduring fault-lines in modern thinking

Study reopens debate on differences in how men and women think, reports Olga Wojtas

There may be more women on campus today, but a stark gender divide persists, says Melanie Newman

Helen Haste reflects on neuroscience's latest insights about the male and female of our species

Athenian art lauding men's sexual relations with beardless youth still unsettles, says Simon Goldhill

Romantic attractions between teacher and student may be as old as pedagogy itself, but now such relationships cause people to worry about abuses of power and litigation. Only half of institutions have any guidelines on such relationships. Are they needed? asks Hannah Fearn

Lynne Segal is not entirely seduced by arguments for the innate naughtiness of God's chosen people

Ian Patterson wishes a study built around writers' day-to-day concerns wasn't quite so workaday

The author speaks of product placement, 'role model' Katie Price and feminism. Melanie Newman reports

June Purvis on the mother of all resources

At 65, Sheila Rowbotham is fighting for her job and for a new wave of feminism, says Melanie Newman