Budgeon: A Summary

As a framework for understanding social change, Budgeon (2014) highlights how apparent biological gender variations transform into salient constructs through the primacy of a social binary that distinguished between ‘man’ and ‘woman’, and that this constructed binary underpins social change.
Shifts in the individualisation thesis can be understood through this gendered framework. Through the individualisation thesis the emergence of new choices available to young people can be explained by the weakening influence of the social constructed gender binary. Budgeon (2014) describes how shifts in the social conception of gender offer women more choice to “decide on the balance of commitment to education and employment” and to follow “different patterns