A Companion to Gender History surveys the history of women around the world, studies their interaction with men in gendered societies, and looks at the role of gender in shaping human behavior over thousands of years.

• An extensive survey of the history of women around the world, their interaction with men, and the role of gender in shaping human behavior over thousands of years.
• Discusses family history, the history of the body and sexuality, and cultural history alongside women’s history and gender history.
• Considers the importance of class, region, ethnicity, race and religion to the formation of gendered societies.
• Contains both thematic essays and chronological-geographic essays.
• Gives due weight to pre-history and the pre-modern era as well as to the modern era.
• Written by scholars from across the English-speaking world and scholars for whom English is not their first language.

Teresa A. Meade is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Women's Studies at Union College, New York. She is the author of "Civilizing" Rio: Reform and Resistance in a Brazilian City (1997), A Brief History of Brazil (2003), and is working on a project on marriage on the Alta California frontier, 1769–1860.

Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks is Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her recent books include Gender in History (Blackwell, 2001), Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (1993), iscovering the Global Past: A Look at the Evidence (1997), and Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World (1999).