Configuring Gender : University of Toronto Press : 9781551110943 : 1551110946 : 01 Mar 2000 : "Gender", as an idea or concept "defines the feminist critical project." It is in the spirit of this project that Barbara Marshall undertakes a critical examination of gender as a constitutive category, not only in feminist social theory but also in recent political debates. This brief book focuses on how the idea of gender has developed both in scholarship and in the public mind, for the notion of gender has, as the author notes, "taken up residence in the public consciousness, and become one of the lenses through which we seek to understand ourselves and our everyday lives, as well as to comprehend the public issues of the day." Gender has become a critical social fact but a fact (like all such facts) constantly reconstituted as those who fight the social issues through which it travels, adopt it for their own purpose. Feminists have defined critiques of patriarchal society according to th