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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.
- 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.
Gender should not be confused with sex, referring to "males" and "females" classified according to genotypic differences and distinct primary and secondary sex characteristics.
The gender (pronounced with a hard G) is also an Indonesian musical instrument used in gamelan orchestras.
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 gender role will be appropriate.