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Gender

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Culture and Diversity

   The word gender describes the idea that many animal species are divided
   into what are known as sexes, i.e. male and female, or neither. Some
   languages have a system of grammatical gender; while nouns may be
   classified as "masculine" or "feminine" in such languages, this is
   essentially a convention with little or no connection to their meaning.
   Likewise, a wide variety of phenomena have gendered characteristics
   ascribed to them, by analogy to male and female bodies (such as with
   the gender of connectors and fasteners) or due to social norms. In
   social sciences, the word "gender" is sometimes used in contrast to
   biological sex, to emphasize a social, cultural, or psychological
   dimension. The discipline of gender studies investigates and elaborates
   on the nature of sex and gender.

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. —
          Leviticus, 19:19

   According to Aristotle, the Greek philosopher 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 to indicate male or female qualities:

          The Psyche, or soul, of Tiresias is of the masculine gender —
          Thomas Browne, Hydriotaphia
          I may add the gender too of the person I am to govern — Laurence
          Sterne, A Sentimental Journey
          Black divinities of the feminine gender — Charles Dickens, A
          Tale of Two Cities
          Our most lively impression is that the sun is there assumed to
          be of the feminine gender — Henry James, Essays on Literature

   By 1900, this usage was considered jocular by some, perhaps like the
   modern expression "of the female persuasion". 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[ender], 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 1950s and was well established by the 1980s, 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” — Wendy Kaminer, in The
          Atlantic Monthly (1998)

   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."

   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.

Grammatical gender

   In linguistics, the term "grammatical gender" refers to various forms
   of expressing biological or sociological gender, or sometimes other
   natural characteristics such as animacy, 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 is very rare in modern English, but
   quite common in other languages, including most languages in the
   Indo-European family. Normally, English does not mark nouns or other
   words for gender, although it does express 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.

   A language where grammatical gender is quite active is French, where,
   for example, in the sentences Il est un grand acteur "He is a great
   actor" and Elle est une grande actrice "She is a great actress", 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 such generalized forms of gender agreement, 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

   Male (left) and female fruit flies, D. melanogaster. The female is
   determined by the presence of two X chromosomes.
   Enlarge
   Male (left) and female fruit flies, D. melanogaster. The female is
   determined by the presence of two X chromosomes.

   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 1950s, the term gender has been increasingly used to
   distinguish a social role ( gender role) and/or personal identity (
   gender identity) distinct from biological sex. Sexologist John Money
   wrote in 1955, “[t]he term gender role is used to signify all those
   things that a person says or does to disclose himself or herself as
   having the status of boy or man, girl or woman, respectively. It
   includes, but is not restricted to, sexuality in the sense of
   eroticism.” Elements of such a role include clothing, speech patterns,
   movement and other factors not solely limited to biological sex.

   Many societies categorize all individuals as either male or female —
   however, this is not universal. Some societies recognise a third gender
   — for instance, Native American Two-Spirit people, and hijras of India
   and Pakistan — or even a fourth or fifth. Such categories may be an
   intermediate state between male and female, a state of sexlessness, or
   a distinct gender not dependent on male and female gender roles. Joan
   Roughgarden 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 behaviour available to individual organisms with
   a given biological sex.

   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.

   Some gender associations are changing as society changes, yet much
   controversy exists over the extent to which gender roles are simply
   stereotypes, arbitrary social constructions, or natural innate
   differences.

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 can appear obvious, but the
   matter is complicated for intersexual or transgender people. 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, including
   chromosomes and gonads. Thus, for example, in many jurisdictions a
   person with XY chromosomes 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. In Swedish, "gender" is translated with the linguistic
   parallel "genus" also in sociological contexts, thus: Genusstudier
   (gender studies), genusvetenskap (gender science). "Sex" however, only
   signifies sexual relations, and not the typical Western dichotomy, a
   concept for which "kön" is used. A common distinction is then made
   between "kön" (sex) and "genus" (gender), where "kön" only carries the
   supposedly biological connotations. In earlier literature, and
   occasionally in non-academic contexts, the word "könsroll" (lit. "sex
   role", but contextually translated as "gender role") can be seen.

   In Portuguese the cognate of "sex" is commonly used for what English
   calls "gender", even though the same word can also mean "sexual
   relation", or "genital organ". Nevertheless, the cognate of "gender"
   (also used in the sense of "gender", though less frequently), has begun
   to be used by academics in the context of gender studies.

Other uses

Connectors and fasteners

   In electrical and mechanical trades and manufacturing, and in
   electronics, each of a pair of mating connectors or fasteners (such as
   nuts and bolts) 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.
   An electrical power male plug, left, and matching female socket, of a
   type common in many European countries.
   Enlarge
   An electrical power male plug, left, and matching female socket, of a
   type common in many European countries.

Music

   In western music theory, keys, chords and scales are often described as
   having major or minor tonality, sometimes related to masculine and
   feminine . By analogy, the major scales are masculine (clear, open,
   extroverted), while the minor scales are given feminine qualities
   (dark, soft, introverted). German uses the word Tongeschlecht ("Tone
   gender") for tonality, and the words Dur (from latin durus, hard) for
   major and moll (from latin mollis, soft) for minor.

          See Major and minor.

Spirituality

   In Taoism, yin and yang are considered feminine and masculine,
   respectively. In Christianity, God is described in masculine terms;
   however, the Church has historically been described in feminine terms.
   Of one of the several forms of the Hindu God, Shiva, is Ardhanarishwar
   (literally half-female God). Here Shiva manifests himself so that the
   left half is Female and the right half is Male. The left represents
   Shakti (energy, power) in the form of Goddess Parvati (otherwise his
   consort) and the right half Shiva. Whereas Parvati is the cause of
   arousal of Kama (desires), Shiva is the killer. Shiva is pervaded by
   the power of Parvati and Parvati is pervaded by the power of Shiva.
   While the stone images may seem to represent a half-male and
   half-female God, the true symbolic representation is of a being the
   whole of which is Shiva and the whole of which is Shakti at the same
   time. It is a 3-D representation of only shakti from one angle and only
   Shiva from the other. Shiva and Shakti are hence the same being
   representing a collective of Jnana (knowledge) and Kriya (activity).
   Adi Shankaracharya, the founder of non-dualistic philosophy (Advaita –
   ‘not two’) in Hindu thought says in his ‘Saundaryalaairi’ –“ Shivah
   Shaktayaa yukto yadi bhavati shaktah prabhavitum na che devum devona
   khalu kushalah spanditam api” i.e. It is only when Shiva is united with
   Shakti that He acquires the capability of becoming the Lord of the
   Universe. In the absence of Shakti, He is not even able to stir. In
   fact, the term ‘Shiva’ originated from ‘Shva’, which implies a dead
   body. It is only through his inherent shakti that Shiva realizes his
   true nature. This mythology projects the inherent view in ancient
   Hinduism, that each human carries within himself both male and female
   components, which are forces rather than sexes, and it is the harmony
   between the creative and the annihilative, the strong and the soft, the
   proactive and the passive, that makes a true person. Such thought,
   leave alone entail gender equality, in fact obliterates any material
   distinction between the male and female altogether. This may explain
   why in ancient India we find evidence of homosexuality, bisexuality,
   androgyny, multiple sex partners and open representation of sexual
   pleasures in artworks like the Khajuraho temples, being accepted within
   prevalent social frameworks.

Importance of gender

   Gender has both a practical and academic importance in many fields.

Gender and development

   Gender, and particularly the role of women is widely recognized as
   vitally important to international development issues. This often means
   a focus on gender-equality, ensuring participation, but includes an
   understanding of the different roles and expectation of the genders
   within the community.

   As well as directly addressing inequality, attention to gender issues
   is regarded as important to the success of development programs, for
   all participants. For example, in microfinance it is common to target
   women, as besides the fact that women tend to be over-represented in
   the poorest segments of the population, they are also regarded as more
   reliable at repaying the loans. Also, it is claimed that women are more
   likely to use the money for the benefit of their families.

   Development consultant Kamal Kar has described the particular
   difficulties of women in poor Bangladeshi villages where open
   defecation is practised; women are expected to not practise open
   defecation during daylight hours and suffer discomfort and health
   problems as a result.

   Some organizations working in developing countries and in the
   development field have incorporated advocacy and empowerment for women
   into their work. A notable example is Wangari Maathai's environmental
   organization, the Green Belt Movement.
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender"
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