Gender

In a variety of different contexts, gender refers to the masculinity or femininity of words, persons, organisms, or characteristics. The classification into masculine and feminine is analogous to the biological sex of the referent, often by physical or syntactical analogy, linguistic decay, misunderstandings, societal norms, or personal choice. The nature of this categorisation varies depending on the context. For example, gender can be used to refer to the differences in biological sex between two members of a species, or different characteristics of electrical connectors. On the other side, in feminist theory, gender is used to refer solely to socially constructed differences between male and female behaviour, and the gender of a noun in many languages may have nothing to do with the concept described by it.

Sex

Main article: Biological sex

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Gender can refer to the (biological) condition of being male or female, applied to humans, animals, plants, and other sexual species. In this sense, the term is a synonym for sex, a word that has undergone a usage shift itself, having become a synonym for sexual reproduction.

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Haig:

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: "Among the reasons that working scientists have given me for choosing gender rather than sex in biological contexts are desires to signal sympathy with feminist goals, to use a more academic term, or to avoid the connotation of copulation."

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See sex-determination systems and sexual differentiation (for homo sapiens).

Related Topics:
Sex-determination systems - Sexual differentiation

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