Gender studies is a key area of ​​critical discussion in academia today, but the term gender is extremely slippery and is often mistaken for sex. But in reality, sex is a person's biological identity, while gender is an artificial construction grounded in sociology, and gender roles are culturally defined, and therefore bound to time and place. Gender, in fact, refers to "those characteristics of socio-cultural origin that are conventionally associated with the different sexes". (Goring et al 248) Thus, the term “gender” means “the social classification of men and women as masculine and feminine.” (Oakley 16) Furthermore, this artificial construction of gender is dominated by men, and women have been given a secondary place in the hierarchy of this construction due to their physical weakness and reproductive power. Men have always limited and controlled women in society by specifying their space and limiting their area of ​​action. Therefore, each culture has built a repertoire that sets norms, rules and attributes that women should obey in order to be subordinate to men. In fact, women are not attributed any autonomous identity in society by men who consider women as a commodity. In reality, a woman is not born a woman but rather a female, but society, dominated by men, transforms her into a woman, relegating her to a liminal world. Simon De Beauvoir described this fact in The Second Sex with the following words: “You are not born, but you become a woman. No biological, psychological or economic destiny determines the figure that the human woman presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature…” (273). Thus, a woman is constructed by society through its cultural codes and practice...... middle of paper......, Paul, Hawthorn , Jeremy and Mitchell, Domhnall. Studying literature: the essential companion. London: Hodder Education, 1st Pub 2001. Rpt 2008. Print.3. Kashyap, Aruni. The house of a thousand stories. Delhi: Penguin India, 2013. Print.4. McLeod, John. Beginning of postcolonialism. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000.Print.5. Millett, Kate. Sexual Politics (1969). London: Hart-Davis, 1971. Print6. Oakley, Ann. Sex, gender and society. London: Temple Smith, 1972. Print.7. Rushdie, Salman. Shame (1983). London: Vintage, 1995. Print.8. Ruthven, K.K., Feminist Literary Studies. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1980. Print.9. Shaw, Bernardo. Man and the superman. Ed. ACWard. Delhi:Orient Longman, 1954, print.10. Tolan, Fiona. “Feminisms”. Literary theory and criticism. Ed. Patrizia Waugh. Noida: OUP. 1st Pub 2006. Rpt 2011. Print.