Gender

Gender or social sex is the term used to describe all those aspects of sex that describe a person in society and culture as distinct from his or her biological sex. The word gender is an Anglicism. In English, there are two terms for gender: "sex", the biological sex, and "gender", the social sex. The social sex does not necessarily have to correspond to the biological sex, so that the outer appearance of a person does not indicate his or her gender. [Source: "Die Fibel der vielen kleinen Unterschiede", LAG Lesben in NRW e.V.]

Today, gender in the social sciences refers to the social gender role or the social gender characteristics. It thus refers to everything that is considered typical for a certain gender in a culture (such as clothing and profession). Gender does not refer directly to physical sex characteristics. [Source: Genderdings by dissens, the Institute for Education and Research].