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Gender & Society

Gender & Society

Official Publication of Sociologists for Women in Society

eISSN: 15523977 | ISSN: 08912432 | Current volume: 38 | Current issue: 2 Frequency: Bi-monthly
Gender & Society, the official journal of Sociologists for Women in Society, is a top-ranked journal in sociology and women's studies and publishes fewer than five percent of all papers submitted to it. Articles in Gender & Society analyze gender and gendered processes in interactions, organizations, societies, and global and transnational spaces. The journal primarily publishes empirical articles, which are both theoretically engaged and methodologically rigorous, including both qualitative and quantitative methods. The journal also occasionally publishes theoretical articles that meaningfully advance sociological theories about gender

Some of the relevant, timely, and important topics covered in recent issues include:

  • Activism and Social Movements
  • Class Inequality
  • Division of Household Labor
  • Feminist Identity
  • Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies
  • Gender and Migration
  • Gender and Work
  • Gendered Bodies
  • Health and Carework
  • Heteronormativity
  • Intimate Partner Violence
  • Masculinities
  • Media Representations
  • Parenting
  • Politics and Gender
  • Race, Gender, and Class Discrimination
  • Reproductive Technology
  • Religion and Gender
  • Sexual Harassment
  • Sexualities
  • Welfare Reform
Gender & Society not only publishes the best of every perspective but seeks to advance a distinctly social perspective with which to analyze gender.
 

Gender & Society promotes feminist scholarship and the social scientific study of gender. Gender & Society publishes theoretically engaged and methodologically rigorous articles that make original contributions to gender theory. The journal takes a multidisciplinary, intersectional, and global approach to gender analyses.

Editors
Patricia Richards University of Georgia, USA
Sharmila Rudrappa University of Texas, Austin, USA
Deputy Editors
Erika Busse-Cárdenas Macalester College, USA
Ben Carrington University of Southern California, USA
Pei-Chia Lan National Taiwan University
Ghassan Moussawi University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, USA
stef shuster Michigan State University
Managing Editors
Upasana Garnaik University of Texas at Austin, USA
Rebekah Groth University of Georgia, USA
Jasmine Underwood University of Georgia, USA
Book Review Editor
Kelsy Burke University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Editorial Board
Srila Roy University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
Anima Adjepong University of Cincinnati, USA
Sabrina Alimahomed California State University, Long Beach, USA
Pallavi Banerjee University of Calgary, Canada
Chris Barcelos University of Massachusetts Boston, USA
Brittany Battle Wake Forest University, USA
Julie Brines University of Washington, USA
Robyn Brown University of Kentucky, USA
Youngjoo Cha Indiana University
Hae Yeon Choo University of Toronto, Canada
Julia Chuang University of Maryland, USA
Heejung Chung University of Kent, UK
Caitlyn Collins Washington University in Saint Louis, USA
D'Lane Compton University of New Orleans, USA
Sarah Damaske Pennsylvania State University, USA
Emmanuel David University of Colorado, Boulder, USA
Christy Erving University of Texas at Austin, USA
Avery Everhart University of British Colombia, Canada
Glenda M. Flores University of California-Irvine, USA
Divine Fuh University of Cape Town, South Africa
Saskia Glas Radboud University, Netherlands
Erika Grajeda Texas A&M University, San Antonio
Saida Grundy Boston University
Amy Hanser The University of British Columbia, Canada
Fauzia Husain Queen’s University, Canada
Maria Cecilia Hwang McGill University, Canada
Angela Jones Farmingdale State College, State University of New York, USA
Danya Laos University of California-Berkeley
Erin Lentz University of Texas at Austin, USA
Naomi Lightman Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada
Krystale E. Littlejohn University of Oregon, USA
Sigrid Luhr University of Illinois Chicago, USA
Zakiya Luna Washington University in Saint Louis, USA
Julia McReynolds-Perez College of Charleston, USA
Ethel Mickey California State University, San Bernadino
Joel Mittleman University of Notre Dame, USA
Christin L. Munsch University of Connecticut, USA
Michela Musto Brown University, USA
Kris Natalier Flinders University, Australia
Eunsil Oh University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
Hillary Potter University of Colorado Boulder, USA
Aliya Hamid Rao London School of Economics, UK
Victoria Reyes University of California, Riverside, USA
Elena Shih Brown University, USA
Susan E. Short Brown University, USA
Megan Stubbs-Richardson Mississippi State University, USA
Bárbara Sutton University at Albany, USA
Paige L. Sweet University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA
Catherine J. Taylor University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
Margarita Torre University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain
Kelly Underman Drexel University, USA
Jennifer Utrata University of Puget Sound, USA
Gowri Vijayakumar Brandeis University, USA
Stefan Vogler University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA
Beccy Watson Leeds Beckett University, UK
Lindsey Wilkinson Portland State University, USA
Jill Yavorsky University of North Carolina, Charlotte, USA
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  • Gender & Society is a top-ranked, peer-reviewed, sociological journal with a global audience. Articles in Gender & Society analyze gender and gendered processes in interactions, organizations, societies, and global and transnational spaces. The journal primarily publishes empirical articles, which are both theoretically engaged and methodologically rigorous, including both qualitative and quantitative methods. The journal also publishes theoretical articles that meaningfully advance sociological theories about gender. 

    Gender & Society receives about 700 manuscripts a year and publishes fewer than five percent of all submissions. Before submitting, it’s important to determine whether Gender & Society is a good fit for your paper. Reading a current issue of the journal may help identify whether G&S is an appropriate outlet for your work. Keeping in mind the journal’s sociological focus and its worldwide reach, do you think the readers who would be most interested in your paper are already reading the journal? Does your paper follow the basic format for most Gender & Society articles? Does your paper focus on gender as a social structure or stratification system, and not only an individual attribute? For example, do you simply document differences between men and women, or do you analyze how and why gender operates as it does? Is an analysis of gender central to your paper’s argument? In addition, does your paper recognize that gendered processes may vary across intersections of race, class, and other global signifiers of identity and social location? Not all papers will analyze across these intersections, but they should recognize that these intersections exist.

    Most articles published in Gender & Society fall into one of two categories: empirical articles and theoretical articles, although theoretical articles are relatively rare.

    Empirical articles are based on original research using qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods. This might include data collected through interviews, ethnographies, experiments, surveys, content/narrative analyses, archives, other comparative-historical sources, secondary data, social network analyses, case studies, and participatory action research, including emerging digital methodologies. Submissions should be approximately 9,000 words long. Most published articles are around that length, though a higher word count is sometimes acceptable. While all papers need not follow a specific template, reviewers and readers may be accustomed to seeing research presented in a particular format. For example, an empirical paper might be organized as follows:

    • A 150-200 word abstract providing an overview of the paper’s main questions, methods, and contributions.
    • A short introduction posing a research question focused on gender and noting the question’s importance. 
    • A review of the literature placing the question in its appropriate theoretical and empirical context and making clear how the question has the potential to contribute to existing sociological theory. In some cases, this section might include hypotheses or theoretical expectations, or a section on “background,” which gives necessary information about the context of the study.
    • A methods section systematically describing the methods used in collecting the data for the paper. This section should also explain the sampling approach and provide details about the sample. Finally, it should describe how the data was analyzed, providing a summary of how the results section will unfold.
    • A results section, which systematically presents the major findings, providing detailed evidence (such as quotes or numbers), and connecting these findings back to theory. This section should consist of thematically organized subsections, to make it easier to follow the paper’s narrative. This should be the longest section of the paper.
    • A conclusion reiterating the research question and findings and considering alternative explanations and limitations of the study. This section should identify the paper’s main contributions to gender knowledge and feminist theory, by identifying how the findings have extended, filled a gap, or contradicted previous research and theory.

    While not all papers follow this format, it is important that all empirical papers include discussions of both theory and method. You might look at the following recently published articles in Gender & Society as potential models for empirical articles:

    Sarah Patterson, Sarah Damaske, and Christen Sheroff

    Gender and the MBA: Differences in Career Trajectories, Institutional Support, and Outcomes https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0891243217703630

    Heather McLaughlin, Christopher Uggen, and Amy Blackstone

    The Economic and Career Effects of Sexual Harassment on Working Women https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0891243217704631

    William J. Scarborough, Ray Sin, and Barbara Risman

    Attitudes and the Stalled Gender Revolution: Egalitarianism, Traditionalism, and Ambivalence from 1977  through 2016 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0891243218809604

    Empirical comparative historical articles do not always follow the same format, but the following article in Gender & Society provides another model, one that is rich with evidence for the arguments that the author makes, but argued in a slightly different style:

    Evelyn Nakano Glenn

    Yearning for Lightness : Transnational Circuits in the Marketing and Consumption of Skin Lighteners http://gas.sagepub.com/content/22/3/281

    Theoretical articles are focused arguments, highlighting key tensions in the literature, and making an argument regarding new theoretical directions. A review of existing literature does not qualify as a theoretical article.  Theoretical pieces should be timely, engaging to a wide audience, and logically presented. Some papers may rely on empirical data but take a “big picture” approach to the topic. Theoretical pieces do not always follow a particular format and may be shorter in length than an empirical article.

    All papers published in Gender & Society must carry significant theoretical and empirical weight.

    Online Process

    Manuscripts should be submitted electronically to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/gendsoc. Submitting authors are required to set up an online account on the SageTrack system powered by ScholarOne. Manuscripts that are accepted for review will be sent out anonymously for editorial evaluation. Obtaining permission for any quoted or reprinted material that requires permission is the responsibility of the author. Submission of a manuscript implies commitment to publish in the journal. Authors submitting manuscripts to the journal should not simultaneously submit them to another journal, nor should manuscripts have been published elsewhere in substantially similar form or with substantially similar content. Authors in doubt about what constitutes prior publication should consult the Editor. The online process permits submission of a separate title page, a main manuscript document, and supplementary files. Prior to submission, we recommend consulting the Gender & Society Guide to First Submissions, available here as well as previous issues of the journal to get a sense of the kind of papers we publish.

    Format

    Papers should be approximately 9,000 words, including an abstract (150-200 words), notes, and references. All tables, figures, and appendices must be submitted separately from the paper, and should be submitted together in one supplemental file. Authors should consult the Chicago Manual of Style, Style B, for citations and references, or refer to the Gender & Society style manual, available here. Authors should not number the pages; the online system will number the pages.

    Plain Language Summary

    A plain language summary (PLS) is an optional addition that can be submitted for any article type that requires an abstract. The plain language title (approx. 50 words) and plain language summary (approx. 300 words) should describe the article using non-technical language, making it accessible to a wider network of readers. More information and guidance on how to write a PLS can be found on our Author Gateway.

    The PLS publishes directly below the scientific abstract and are open access making it available online for anyone to read. Peer review of the PLS will be conducted following our PLS reviewer guidelines. When submitting, authors should enter their plain language title and plain language summary into the box provided in the submission system when prompted. The PLS does not need to be provided in the manuscript text or as a separate file. If you are not submitting a PLS with your submission, please enter “N/A” in each box.

    If you need professional help writing your Plain Language Summary, please visit our Author Services portal.

    Anonymized Review Process

    The review process for manuscripts submitted to Gender & Society is anonymous; please remove all material from the manuscript that identifies you. Your submission should be anonymized, meaning there is no clear way for reviewers to identify you as the author. All references to your own work should be cited in the third person. Please do not make references to your own work unless they are absolutely necessary; for example, if the reviewer would be able to identify you if a citation was omitted. A reference to any previous work should read: “As Collins (2014) has found…” and NOT like: “As I previously demonstrated… (Collins 2014).” Only include acknowledgements on a separate title page, not on the manuscript document.

    For additional information, contact the Gender & Society office at gendersociety@socwomen.org.

    Book Reviews

    Books for review should be sent to Kelsy Burke, Gender & Society Book Review Editor, University of Nebraska – Lincoln, Department of Sociology, 711 Oldfather Hall, Lincoln NE 68588-0324; gsbooks@unl.edu.

    Please note that the journal does not review textbooks, films/DVDs, or books that do not incorporate gender as a central category of analysis. The journal receives far more books than can be reviewed. The journal also does not accept or consider unsolicited book reviews, but instead invites appropriate scholars to review books germane to the scope and mission of Gender & Society.

    Guest Edited Special Issues

    Gender & Society occasionally - but not frequently - publishes guest edited special issues. Please click here to see the full guidelines on special issues.

    If you or your funder wish your article to be freely available online to nonsubscribers immediately upon publication (gold open access), you can opt for it to be included in Sage Choice, subject to payment of a publication fee. The manuscript submission and peer review procedure is unchanged. On acceptance of your article, you will be asked to let Sage know directly if you are choosing Sage Choice. To check journal eligibility and the publication fee, please visit Sage Choice. For more information on open access options and compliance at Sage, including self author archiving deposits (green open access) visit Sage Publishing Policies on our Journal Author Gateway.

    Supplementary Materials

    This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information, please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplementary files.

    Guidelines for First-Time Submissions (2023)

    Gender & Society is a top-ranked, peer-reviewed, sociological journal with a global audience. Articles in Gender & Society analyze gender and gendered processes in interactions, organizations, societies, and global and transnational spaces. The journal primarily publishes empirical articles, which are both theoretically engaged and methodologically rigorous, including both qualitative and quantitative methods. The journal also publishes theoretical articles that meaningfully advance sociological theories about gender.

    Gender & Society receives nearly 700 manuscripts a year and publishes fewer than 5% of all submissions. Before submitting, it’s important to determine whether Gender & Society is a good fit for your paper. Reading a current issue of the journal may help identify whether G&S is an appropriate outlet for your work. You can access a sample issue here. Keeping in mind the journal’s sociological focus and its worldwide reach, do you think the readers who would be most interested in your paper are already reading the journal? Does your paper follow the basic format for most Gender & Society articles? Does your paper focus on gender as a social structure or stratification system, and not only an individual attribute? For example, do you simply document differences between men and women or across the gender spectrum, or do you analyze how and why gender operates as it does? Is an analysis of gender central to your paper’s argument? In addition, does your paper recognize that gendered processes may vary across intersections of race, class, and other global signifiers of identity and social location? Not all papers will analyze across these intersections, but they should recognize that these intersections exist. 

    Most articles published in Gender & Society fall into one of two categories: empirical articles and theoretical articles, although theoretical articles are relatively rare.

    All papers published in Gender & Society must carry significant theoretical and empirical weight.

    Online Submission

    Manuscripts should be submitted electronically at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/gendsoc. Submitting authors are required to set up an online account on the Sage Track system powered by ScholarOne. The online process permits submission of a separate title page, a main manuscript document, and supplementary files. Please do not submit any part of your manuscript in .pdf or .xls format; use only MS Word. Your submission should include:

    • A separate title page, which includes an author’s note with acknowledgments to funders or colleagues who have commented on your work.
    • An anonymized main manuscript document, including the abstract, text, and references, as a MS Word document. “Anonymized” means that you have obscured any references to your own work and have taken out any sentences that might lead readers to identify you. This includes specific references to your institution or funding sources- these belong on your title page. All references to your own work should be cited in the third person. Please do not make references to your own work unless they are absolutely necessary; for example, if the reviewer would be able to identify you if a citation was omitted. A reference to any previous work should read: As Collins (2014) has found… and NOT like: As I previously demonstrated…  (Collins 2014)
    • If your paper includes tables and/or figures, submit them in ONE MS Word document. All tables and figures must appear in this document; do not submit nine different files if your paper refers to nine tables. Label each table and figure so that they clearly correspond to the appropriate position in the text.  For instance, in the document insert a note such as “[Table 1 about here]” where it would make sense for your table/figure to be located. Please look at recent issues of the journal in thinking about how to format your tables and figures.
    • Pages should not be numbered; the online system numbers pages automatically.
    • There is no need to submit a cover letter.

    Manuscripts accepted for review will be sent out anonymously for editorial evaluation, with reviewers chosen from around the globe. Submission of a manuscript implies commitment to publish in the journal. Authors submitting manuscripts to the journal should not simultaneously submit them to another journal, nor should manuscripts have been published elsewhere in substantially similar form or with substantially similar content. Authors in doubt about what constitutes prior publication should consult the editors. Obtaining permission for any quoted or reprinted material or artwork that requires permission is the responsibility of the author. Manuscripts sent for external review will be under review two to three months from the date the manuscript is submitted.

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