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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by MartinHarper (talk | contribs) at 17:03, 20 February 2003 (revert - this is a disambig page, so we should leave such details to the sex and gender role articles, respectively.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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 is commonly used as a synonym for sex, refering to males and females classified according to genetic differences and distinct primary and secondary sex characteristics. This usage is considered incorrect by some.

• Social scientists use "gender" to refer to a particular social status, and cluster of roles, that are often (but not exclusively) assigned on the basis of sex. This is discussed on the article on gender roles.

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

• The gender (pronounced with a hard G) is an Indonesian musical instrument used in gamelan orchestras. See gender (music)

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. Sometimes a link to both sex and will be appropriate.