Being a cultural being also means being a "gendered" being in the sense that ideas about body and gender affect both one's own living space and the ways in which society is organized. Therefore, questions related to sex, body, sexuality and gender have long been central in ethnology.
Drawing on people's historical and contemporary meaning-making, ethnologists have studied topics like the division of labour and the status of unwed mothers in peasant society, how schools provide sex and relationship education to teenagers, gay men’s funerals in the wake of AIDS, and dating apps. A gender perspective has also proved indispensable in studies of migration, globalisation and multicultural societies.