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The word gender describes the state of being Male , Female , or neither. Some languages have a system of Grammatical Gender (also known as Noun classes); while a noun may be described as "masculine" or "feminine" by Convention , this has no necessary connection to the Natural Gender of the thing described. Likewise, a wide variety of phenomena may have gendered characteristics ascribed to them, either by analogy to male and female bodies, such as with the Gender Of Connectors And Fasteners , or due to Social Norms , such as interpreting the color Pink as Feminine and Blue as Masculine . In social sciences, the word "gender" is sometimes used in contrast to biological Sex , to emphasise a social, cultural or psychological dimension. The discipline of Gender Studies investigates the nature of sex and gender in a social context. Much controversy exists over the extent to which Gender Role s are simply Stereotypes , arbitrary Social Construction s, or natural innate differences. ETYMOLOGY AND USAGE ''Gender'' comes from Middle English ''gendre'', from Latin ''genus'', all meaning "kind", "sort", or "type". Ultimately from the proto Indo European root, ''gen'', which is also the root for "kind", "king" and many others. It appears in Modern French in the word ''genre'' (type, kind) and is related to the Greek root ''gen-'' (to produce), appearing in '' Gene '', '' Genesis '' and '' Oxygen ''. As a verb, it is used for ''to breed'' in the King James Bible : Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind. According to Aristotle , the Greek philospher Protagoras used the terms ''masculine'', ''feminine'', and ''neuter'' to classify nouns, introducing the concept of Grammatical Gender . At least since the 14th Century , the word is also used as a synonym for biological sex, often figuratively to indicate male or female qualities: The Psyche, or soul, of Tiresias is of the masculine gender I may add the gender too of the person I am to govern Black divinities of the feminine gender Our most lively impression is that the sun is there assumed to be of the feminine gender By 1900, this usage was considered jocular by some.First edition OED (1899). In 1926, Fowler's Modern English Usage suggested that “gender...is a grammatical term only. To talk of persons...of the masculine or feminine g {Link without Title} , meaning of the male or female sex, is either a jocularity (permissible or not according to context) or a blunder.” In some parts of the social sciences, following a usage shift that began in the 1950 s and was well established by the 1980 s, ''gender'' has been used increasingly to refer to social rather than biological categories, for which the word ''sex'' is used: “Today a return to separate single-sex schools may hasten the revival of separate gender roles” The American Heritage Dictionary uses the following two sentences to illustrate the difference: ''“The effectiveness of the medication appears to depend on the sex ''(not gender)'' of the patient.”'' But: ''“In peasant societies, gender ''(not sex)'' roles are likely to be more clearly defined."''The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. Usage note: "Gender" In the last half of the 20th century, the use of ''gender'' in academia has increased greatly, and it now outnumbers the word ''sex'' in the humanities, social sciences, and arts. However, in many instances, the term ''gender'' acts as a Euphemism for ''sex'', and the distinction between ''sex'' and ''gender'' is only fitfully observed.Haig, D. (2004). "The inexorable rise of gender and the decline of sex: social change in academic titles, 1945-2001." ''Archives of Sexual Behavior'' 33: 87-96. PDF document GENDER IN GRAMMAR See Also: Grammatical gender In linguistics, the term gender refers to various forms of expressing biological or sociological gender by Inflecting words. For example, in the words ''actor'' and ''actress'' the suffix ''-or'' denotes "male person" (masculine), and the suffix ''-ress'' denotes "female person" (feminine). This type of inflection, called '''lexical gender''', is very rare in English , but quite common in other languages, including most languages in the Indo-European family. Normally, Modern English does not mark nouns for gender, but it expresses gender in the third person singular personal pronouns ''he'' (male person), ''she'' (female person), and ''it'' (object, abstraction, or animal), and their other inflected forms. When gender is expressed on other Parts Of Speech , besides Nouns and Pronouns , the language is said to have grammatical gender. For example, in French the sentences ''Il est un grand acteur'' and ''Elle est une grande actrice'' mean "He is a great actor" and "She is a great actress", respectively. Not only do the nouns (''acteur'', ''actrice'') and the pronouns (''il'', ''elle'') denote the gender of their Referent , but so do the Articles (''un'', ''une''; "a") and the Adjectives (''grand'', ''grande''; "great"). Modern English does not exhibit this grammatical feature, although Old English did. Grammatical gender may be partly assigned by Convention , so it doesn't always coincide with Natural Gender . Furthermore, the gender assigned to animals, inanimate objects and abstractions is often arbitrary. Thus, in Latin and Romance Languages the word ''Sol'' (Sun) is masculine and the word ''Luna'' (Moon) is feminine, but, in German and Germanic Languages in general, the opposite occurs. SEX See Also: Biological sex Gender can refer to the (biological) condition of being male or female, or less commonly Hermaphrodite or Neuter , as applied to humans, animals, and plants. 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 intercourse''. In a study of scientists' usage of "gender" and "sex", Haig wrote: 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. SOCIAL CATEGORY Since the . Many societies categorise all individuals as either argues that in some non-human animal species, there can also be said to be more than two genders, in that there might be multiple templates for behavior available to individual organisms with a given biological sex.Roughgarden, Joan. (2004) ''Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People''. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-24073-1 There is debate over to what extent gender is a Social Construct and to what extent it is a Biological construct. One point of view in the debate is Social Constructionism , which suggests that gender is entirely a social construct. Contrary to social constructionism is Essentialism which suggests that it is entirely a biological construct. Others' opinions on the subject lie somewhere in between. Gender associations are constantly changing as society progresses. For example, the color pink was considered masculine in the early 1900s and is now seen as feminine. Legal status A person's gender as female or male has legal significance -- gender is indicated on government documents, and laws provide differently for women and men. Some examples of how gender is legally relevant: many pension systems have different retirement ages for men or women; in many jurisdictions, certain sexual offences can only be committed by men (e.g. rape), and usually marriage is only available to different-gender couples, whereas a civil partnership is often only available for same-gender couples. The question then arises as to what legally determines whether someone is male or female. In most cases this appears obvious, but Intersexual or Transgender people complicate matters. Different jurisdictions have adopted different answers to this question. Almost all countries permit changes of legal gender status in cases of intersexualism, when the gender assignment made at birth is determined upon further investigation to be biologically inaccurate -- technically, however, this is not a change of status per se, rather it is a recognition of a status which was deemed to exist unknown from birth. Increasingly, jurisdictions also provide a procedure for changes of legal gender for transgender people. Gender Assignment , when there are any indications that genital sex might not be decisive in a particular case, is normally not defined by any single definition, but by a combination of conditions, include chromoses and gonads. Thus, for example, in many jurisdictions a person with XY chromoses but female gonads could be recognised as female at birth. The ability to Change Legal Gender for transgender people in particular has given rise to the phenomena in some jurisdictions of the same person having different genders for the purposes of different areas of the law. For example, in Australia prior to the Re Kevin decisions, a transsexual person could be recognised as the gender they identified with under many areas of the law, e.g. social security law, but not for the law of marriage. Thus, for a period it was possible for the same person to have two different genders under Australian law. It is also possible in federal systems for the same person to have one gender under state law and a different gender under federal law (e.g. suppose the state recognises gender transitions, but the federal government does not). In feminist theory During the 1970s there was no consensus about how the terms were to be applied. In the 1974 edition of ''Masculine/Feminine or Human'', the author uses “innate gender” and “learned sex roles”, but in the 1978 edition, the use of ''sex'' and ''gender'' is reversed. By 1980 , most feminist writings had agreed on using ''gender'' only for socioculturally adapted traits. Other languages In English, both ''sex'' and ''gender'' are used in contexts where they could not be substituted ( sexual intercourse; anal sex; safe sex; sex worker; sex slave). Other languages, like German, use the same word ''Geschlecht'' to refer both to grammatical gender and to biological sex, making the distinction between ''sex'' and ''gender'' advocated by some anthropologists difficult. In some contexts, German has adopted the English loan-word ''gender'' to achieve this distinction. Sometimes 'Geschlechtsidentitaet' is used as gender (although it literally means ''gender identity'') and 'Geschlecht' as sex (translation of Judith Butler's ''Gender Trouble''). More common is the use of modifiers: ''biologisches Geschlecht'' for ''sex'', ''Geschlechtsidentität'' for ''gender identity'' and ''Geschlechtsrolle'' for ''gender role'' etc. OTHER USES Connectors and fasteners See Also: Gender of connectors and fasteners In Electrical and Mechanical trades and manufacturing, each of a pair of mating Connectors or Fastener s is conventionally assigned the designation ''male'' or ''female''. The assignment is by direct Analogy with animal Genitalia ; the part bearing one or more protrusions, or which fits inside the other, being designated male and the part containing the corresponding indentations or fitting outside the other being female. Examples:
The gender of a connector is determined by the structure of its primary functional components, e.g., the conductors of an electrical connector, or the load-bearing parts of a fastener, and not by secondary features such as covers, shields or handles that may be installed for environmental protection, safe operation, etc. Connectors are also classified into ''plugs'' and ''receptables'' (or ''sockets'', ''jacks''); plugs are often male and receptables often female, but this is not always so. For example, the C13 IEC Connector used to connect many desktop computers is female plug that fits into a male receptacle (however the electrical contacts still match the standard gender usage, the male receptacle has male electrical prongs, but a female plastic shell). A device called a '' Gender Changer '' may be used to join two connectors of the same gender, for example, to extend one video cable with another. Certain Connector designs involve paired identical parts each containing both protrusions and indentations; the term ''hermaphrodite'' is used for such devices. The SAE Connector is an example of a hermaphrodite connector. Music In Western Music theory, chords and scales are grouped into ''modes'' called ''major'' and ''minor'', traditionally related to ''masculine'' and ''feminine''. By analogy, the ''major'' scales are masculine (clear, open, extrovert), while the minor scales are given feminine qualities (dark, soft, introvert). German uses the same word (''Tongeschlecht''), and the words ''Dur'' (from latin ''durus'', hard) for ''major'' and ''moll'' (from latin ''mollis'', soft) for ''minor''. See REFERENCES
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