The study of sexuality is moving from margin to centre stage in sociology, as the 1994 British Sociological Association annual conference on 'Sexualities in Social Context' demonstrated. Drawn from that conference, the papers in this volume contribute to the debates which have developed on the relationship between the sexual and the social, and between gender and sexuality. The focus is on women, and from different perspectives the authors explore the themes of gendered identity, the construction of sexuality, embodiment and control. The social contexts in which these themes are elaborated include the family, the law, the education system, medical practice and discourse, and cultural representations and texts.

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Preface and Acknowledgements - Notes on Contributors - Introduction; J.Holland & L.Adkins - PART 1: THE FAMILY AND GENDERED IDENTITIES - Gender, Care and Sensibility in Family and Kin Relationships; J.Mason - The Political Economy of Romance: Popular Culture, Social Divisions and Social Reconstruction in Wartime; P.Allatt - The Single Mothers' Debate: A Children's Rights Perspective; S.Laws - Girls' Own Story: The Search for a Sexual Identity in Times of Family Change; C.Mann - PART 2: BODIES, MEDICALISATION AND CONTROL - Breast-Feeding and the Social Construction of Heterosexuality or 'what breasts are really for'; P.Carter - Women hearing Men: The Cervical Smear Test and the Social Construction of Sexuality; L.McKie - Discourses on the Menopause and Female Sexual Identity; G.Darke - PART 3: THE CONSTRUCTION OF HETEROSEXUALITY - Contradictions in Discourse: Gender, Sexuality and HIV/AIDS; D.Richardson - Gender and Sexuality in the Social Construction of Rape and Consensual Sex: A Study of Process and Outcome in Six Recent Rape Trials; A.Edwards - Keeping Them in Their Place: Hetero/sexist Harassment, Gender and the Enforcement of Heterosexuality; D.Epstein - Desperately Seeking Post-Heterosexual Woman; C.Smart - Index