Gender: definitions and connotations

This lecture on gender explores some key ideas and issues that help to explain the differences between sex and gender.

The anatomical definitions relate to sex whilst gender is more concerned with social roles and with ideas around masculinity and femininity. It has long been thought that gender roles were both fixed and binary (eg either one thing or another – male or female) but in recent times there has been much wider exploration of what it means to take a non-binary approach to this issue. Ideas about gender neutrality, transgender existence and inter-sex experiences are all issues for further consideration.

The assumptions that relegated women to the background and to the private rather than to the public domain has been comprehensively challenged and debunked. And as we go through the different sections of this course, that evidence will be offered to you to challenge some of your own preconceptions and ideas and assumptions about what gender is, what gender inequality is, and what it means for each of us in this project.