This chapter provides an overview of some of the social processes that shape gender relations in contemporary societies. It emphasises that there are many forms of masculinity and femininity. It describes and assesses two major accounts of the individual acquisition of gendered identity, and argues for the necessity of viewing gender as a property of social institutions and of culture as much as of individuals. Therefore, the chapter examines in some detail the way that key institutional areas — divisions of labour, the social organisation of childbirth and childcare, sexuality and popular culture and the media — have been permeated by gender, and considers some of the implications of this for contemporary gender relations.