Gender is a more complicated concept then sex: gender theorists claim the two cannot be equated. Where sex is about maleness or femaleness (measured in biological difference) gender is about masculinity & femininity, measured in socially constructed & contextually contingent ideas about what attitudes, attributes & behaviours correspond to ideal-type maleness or femaleness. (Harding, 1987, Peterson, 1993, p5; Zalewski;, 1995, p.341; Steans, 1998, p.12.) .
"Gender rests not on biological sex differences but on interpretations of behaviour that are culturally associated with sex differences", (Peterson, 1993. p.17.) .
Ideas about masculinity & femininity pervade discourses that impact thinking, action, & outcome patriarchy is arguably the oldest example of a forced or exploitative division of social activities and clearly existed before it was ever examined by sociologists, the features of patriarchy had been accepted as natural (biological) in substance. It was not until feminists in the 1960s began to explore the features and institutions of patriarchy, that the power of the concept to explain women's subordinate position in society was proven (Seidman, 1994). .
The feminist engagement with theories of patriarchy criticised pre-existing theoretical positions and their ideological use, tracing theoretical progenitors of popular views about gender, gender roles etc (Cooper, 1995; Raymond, 1980). Developing theories to explain how gender inequalities have there roots ideologies of gender difference and a hierarchical gender order, feminist theoretical concepts of patriarchy are able to explain and challenge gender inequality and the gendered division of labour in the private and social spheres (Seidman, 1994). They have done this by challenging concepts of gender, the family and the unequal division of labour underpinned by a theory of patriarchy that has come to reveal how it operates to subordinate women and privilege men, often at women's expense.
