This book was written for Russians, women and men, who at least once in their lives were faced with the fact that their “gender” became their “ceiling”. Such problems could arise during the period of growing up, when applying for a job, in the labyrinths of career growth , in relationships with friends, in family, in intimate life, in thinking about the fate of the fatherland, and even in such an innocent situation as reading classical literature or watching a movie, when, comparing yourself with the heroes, you suddenly feel some kind of vague anxiety and irritation ( if I don’t want to be a “female”, like Natasha Rostova, then I’m a bad woman? If I don’t like heroes who solve their problems exclusively in hand-to-hand combat, then I’m not a man?).What is our sense of our own gender and what? is this attitude towards us as gendered people? Is it fate, predetermined, as Sigmund Freud said, by anatomy, nature, or something else? After all, you don’t have to be a genius to understand that a modern businessman feels a little different than some Scythian warrior, and the supermodel girl that readers of glossy magazines want to be like is not Tatyana Larina at all. The concept of “gender” , which appears in the title of this book and is probably already familiar to many readers, helps answer these questions.