Title: Sex and gender | Gender Equality
Headings: Sex and gender
Sex and gender
Content: Sex and gender | Gender Equality
Sex and gender
Sex and gender are not interchangeable terms and they do not mean the same thing. Sex refers to our physical realities, e.g. being born male or female, our anatomy or physical characteristics. Gender refers to the economic, social and cultural attributes, roles and opportunities which determine what is expected, allowed and valued in a woman/man and girl/boy. Characteristics, emotions and behaviours that people generally associate with being male or female are learned through socialisation and commonly referred to as “masculinity” and “femininity”. Masculinity and femininity are often seen as being completely different from and opposed to one another. For example, in many Western societies, traditional male gender roles promote being active, aggressive and expressive of anger but not sadness while feminine gender roles promote being passive, compliant and expressive of sadness but not anger. Gender is often a defining aspect of individual identity and influences many aspects of our lives. We behave in ways that others encourage and not in ways that others discourage based on ideas of what it means to be a boy or girl or a man or woman. People are treated differently from birth because of their sex, for example when male babies are dressed in blue pants and female babies are dressed in pink dresses. Gender is also a factor to consider when examining the power and social relations between persons of a different sex and the same sex.