This book contains two years of writing and twenty years of reflection. In 1972, I held my first seminar on gender roles; it was something new at the time and was titled Male and Female in American Society. A few years later, I changed the title to Sociology of Gender. And just a few years later, my first seminar took place within the framework of Women's Studies. To be precise, there was already a precursor to all of this in 1970: a main lecture titled - of all things! - Courtship and Marriage. These titles represent, in many ways, specific stages in the development of the field and, parallel to that, my own intellectual development in exploring the relationships between women and men, relationships that we took for granted during the times of "courtship and marriage." This also marks the beginnings of Sociologists for Women in Society.