This book evolved from the career of Sandra Lipsitz Bem, a psychologist who has studied and written about gender and sexuality; Bern is also a feminist. In the preface, Bern states that in writing this book, she has stepped outside of the traditional boundaries of her discipline: “A more specialized book could not have explained the institutional, ideological, and psychological mechanisms that together keep the economic and political power of a society primarily in the hands of men” (p. ix). Bern traces the institutionalized systems of male political power throughout history. Her premise is that in the great majority of human societies