When ‘gender’ is considered in cultural gerontology, it is common to focus on ‘women’, ‘men and women’ or ‘relations between them’. However, gender is just as relevant in relations between women, and between men, with hierarchies within genders, relations of gender, sex and sexuality, and intersections of genders and other social divisions. In reviewing approaches to gender in cultural gerontology, we outline five broad formulations of theorising: gender based on sex; masculinity/femininity and sex roles; gender categoricalism, gender structures, and structurally contextualised practices; poststructuralist, discursive and deconstructive approaches; and the material-discursive. Though contrasting, these positions overlap and intersect.