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. It contains both thematic essays, which demonstrate how gender has intersected with other historical topics, and chronological-geographic essays, which explore gender in one area of the world during a specific period. All the essays consider the importance of class, region, ethnicity, race, and religion to the formation of gendered societies.

The contributions are written by scholars from across the world, including Canada, Britain, Australia, India, New Zealand, and the United States, as well as by scholars for whom English is not their first language. One of the key points to emerge from the volume as a whole is that no generalization about gender has applied to all times or all places.

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).