The project of feminism is, in part, a method of calling into question ‘the natural’.

The academic study of gender emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, mainly from literary theory. At first, it was simply called “women’s studies,” because it looked at women’s issues and advocated the political empowerment of women. Key texts included Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949),6 a groundbreaking book that argued that women are constructed