Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 10:04, 19 December 2002

The word Gender is derived from the Old French word genre, meaning "kind of thing". It has several meanings in modern usage:

• Gender as a linguistic term is a grammatical distinction and applies to words only, generally assigning them to the classes masculine, feminine or neuter. See grammatical gender.

• Gender as a sociological term refers to a particular social status, and cluster of roles, that are often (but not exclusively) assigned on the basis of sex. See gender roles.

• Gender is commonly used as a synonym for sex, refering to "males" and "females" classified according to genotypic differences and distinct primary and secondary sex characteristics. This usage is considered incorrect by some. Also known as biological gender.

• Situations sometimes arise where gender may be mimicked by inanimate objects, notably in cable connectors that have male and female counterparts. In this context see Gender changer.

This is a disambiguation page; that is, one that just points to other pages that might otherwise have the same name. If you followed a link here, you might want to go back and fix that link to point to the appropriate specific page.

For usages relating to grammar and linguistics see

• Grammatical gender
• Gender-neutral pronouns
• Gender-specific pronoun
• Non-sexist language
• Singular they

For usages relating to sex and human relations see

• Gender and sexuality studies
• Gender studies
• Sexual orientation
• Transgender
• Transsexual
• Legal aspects of transsexualism
• Hate crime
• Patriarchy
• Psychology

For the use of the term in literary criticism see

• gender analysis