Gender and Sexuality

This chapter provides a broad overview of ways in which a focus on gender and sexuality helps further an understanding of the multidimensional nature of inequality. It begins with delineating the role of social conditioning in entrenching roles and relationships for individuals based on gender and sexuality and demonstrates some of the structural inequalities emanating from that. It goes on to focus on reproduction as an illustrative example of the workings of social inequalities along the axes of gender and sexuality, the resilience of structures that perpetuate these inequalities even in the face of “new” developments, and some of the ways in which they can be critically engaged with. This is followed by an examination of how intertwined the economy is with “sex”—understood both as a marker of identity and the act itself. This chapter then explores the law as a site where inequalities on the basis of gender and sexuality are codif ied as also its transformatory potential with regard to instituting rights, overcoming barriers, undoing discrimination, and redressal of violence.