The overall objective of this volume is to revisit gender as a concept that can engage simultaneously with change and continuity in today's Asia, but with greater intellectual reflexivity to examine multiple, intersecting, and complex dimensions of identity and difference, and formerly unacknowledged sources of social power from institutions and their emerging discourses.

Individual chapters, written by gender scholars from Europe and Asia, critically examine the concept of gender in the context of emerging development issues relating to four broad thematic areas: 'Gender over Time', 'Power, Policy and Practices', 'Environment and Resources', and 'Justice and Human Rights'.

In so doing, they also address how gender has been changed, both as a normative process influencing social roles and relations and as an object and/or a concept of research.