I guess such recent works as Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness and J. G. Ballard's The Drowned World, among others. Who knew that sci-fi could be something else than alien invasions and scantily clad women in pulp covers?

Thanks! For a while I've had this notion that the best way to understand differences in gender is to picture some situations of everyday life with reversed genders, and then I thought while reading this, maybe there's a sci-fi book doing exactly that? Turns out this is slightly different, but it seems interesting, I'll give it a try.

Both Le Guin and Ballard are absolutely worth it!

To clarify, the snark in my post was not directed at you, but rather the original author's suggestion that these are somehow recent themes in science fiction. It sounded like he had just been revived from cryogenic sleep where he'd spent the last 50 years with a dusty Heinlein novel in his stiff hand :)

For more recent examples, check out work by Margaret Atwood and Octavia Butler. If you can wait, Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam series is also apparently getting developed as a TV series for HBO.

I think "Mundane SF" is the term you are looking for.