Gender

Gender is defined as the set of traits that distinguishes between femininity and masculinity and that are associated with them. In certain cases, this may encompass sex-based social structures (for example, gender roles) as well as gender identity, depending on the environment. Men and women are classified as either male or female in most cultures; individuals who live outside of these categories may be referred to as non-binary or non-binary men and women. Some cultures, such as the hijras of South Asia, have distinct genders in addition to "man" and "woman," and these are referred to as "third genders" by the media (and fourth genders, etc.). The majority of social scientists believe that gender is a crucial feature of social structure.

Although Madison Bentley had already defined gender as the "socialised obverse of sex" in 1945, and Simone de Beauvoir's 1949 book The Second Sex has been interpreted as the beginning of the distinction between biological sex and "gender role" (which, as originally defined, includes the concepts of both gender role and what would later become known as gender identity), sexologist John Money is often regarded as the one to introduce a terminological distinction among biological sex and "gender role.

Gender studies is a subfield of the social sciences that has its own branch. Other fields of study, such as sexology and neurology, are taking an interest in the topic as well. Research in the social sciences and gender studies in particular sometimes approaches gender as a social construct, while research in the natural sciences investigates whether biological differences in females and males influence the development of gender in humans; both inform the debate about how far biological differences influence the formation of gender identity and gendered behaviour. Similarly, in certain English literary works, there is a division into three categories: biological sex, psychological gender, and social gender role. Transsexualism was the subject of a feminist article published in 1978, which introduced this paradigm.