STEVEN ANDREW is moved beyond words by a historical account of mining in Britain made from the words of the miners themselves

Sex and Gender: a contemporary reader
Alice Sullivan & Selina Todd, Routledge, £35.99
THIS is an important book. It is a scholarly, multi-disciplinary and very well researched exploration of the relationship between sex, gender and gender identity.
It is also a much needed and timely book because, as the editors point out, we are currently witnessing “the erasure of sex categories from language, public policy, discourse and data collection” and this has profound implications for women’s lives.
The authors of the 15 chapters of the book share a broad understanding that sex is biological, immutable and binary, and that gender is an ideological construct which imposes gendered constraints on individuals according to their sex. As such the book’s starting premise is the refutation of gender identity ideology.



