Gender is the oldest category of difference in human history, and the most enduring.
Gender is thus one of the fundamental categories of world history, which seeks to embrace all of human history. It has become even more important in the last decades, as issues of difference and identity have become crucial in historical thought in general, and particularly in world history.
The historiographical traditions of an earlier period were largely dominated by the idea of the nation as the key historiographical unit. Both world history and gender history have broken with this focus on the nation, but have faced difficulties and complexities in creating new categories of analysis to replace it. As movements to break out of the limitations of earlier ways of doing history, world history and gender history have developed along parallel trajectories, but are increasingly intersecting, with studies beginning to incorporate insights from both.This chapter looks first at concepts of gender, noting contradictions and paradoxes in what might initially seem to be a neat dichotomy of male and female. It then examines the development of gender history, and the ways this was interwoven with political movements and with trends in history scholarship. The chapter discusses five key areas of gendered world history research: early human societies; intermarriage; national identity and citizenship; migration; colonialism and imperialism. It ends with some observations about ways in which the subject matter, theory, and methodology within world and global history and the history of gender and sexuality interconnect.