Etymology of Gender

                 Dr. Keshab Chandra Mandal

                           E-Mail: mandalkeshab2013@gmail.com

The concept of gender has now become an issue of extensive study by feminists, developmental theorists and others across the world. Though the concept has assumed an important position by various agencies and institutions of the United Nations as well as national governments since the middle of the last century, it has only become a buzzword in the social science, biological science and medical science in the sixties of the twentieth century. However, the term ‘gender’ gradually occupied an important position in the academic discourse as well developmental agenda from the eighties of the last century. Since then it has attracted the attention of the global leaders, social scientists, feminist writers and activists. The concept was first popularized globally at the dawn of new millennium, when the world leaders set eight Development Goals (MDGs), out of which Number 3 was to Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women, which they targeted and promised to achieve by the end of 2015. All the member countries reaffirmed their faith in the United Nations Organization (UNO) and its Charter and further resolved “To promote gender equality and the empowerment of women as effective ways to combat poverty, hunger and disease and to stimulate development that is truly sustainable.”⁴

     However, the term ‘gender’ has a quite complex etymology. The origin of the term ‘gender’ can be traced to the Middle English gendre, a loanword from Norman-conquest-era Old French, which in modern term is genre. The earliest meanings of the word were ‘kind, sort, genus’ and ‘type or class, style etc.’ which has a sense of Latin genus. It is related with the Greek root gen meaning to produce. Since the 14^th century the word ‘gender’ has been using as a grammatical term, referring to classes of noun designated as masculine, feminine, common or neuter in some languages. But the term did not become common until the mid-twentieth century. Although the words ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ both have the sense of ‘the state of being male or female’, they are often used interchangeably, though ‘sex’ tends to refer to biological differences, while ‘gender’ refers to cultural or social ones and gender is no way inherently and solely connected to one’s physical anatomy.

     The concept of gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to and differentiating between masculinity and femininity. On the basis of the context, these characteristics may include biological sex i.e. the state of being male, female, intersex or transgender. Some cultures have specific gender-related social roles that can be considered distinct from male and female, such as the hijra (eunuch) mainly found in India and Pakistan. 

     John Money, the renowned Sexologist, for the first time in 1955 introduced the terminological distinction between biological sex and gender as a role. Prior to his work, the term was used merely to refer to grammatical categories. But the meaning of the word gender introduced by John Money did not receive widespread popularity from its very first use. The word gender became popular only when the feminist writers embraced the concept with a distinction between biological sex and the social construct of gender.

     Since the seventies of the twentieth century the social scientists have begun to use the term gender strictly in social sciences and English literature only. “In the English literature, the trichotomy between biological sex, psychological gender, and social gender role first appeared in a feminist paper on transsexualism in 1978.”⁵ This change in meaning of gender can be traced to the 1980s and a small acceleration of the process in the scientific literature was observed in 1993 when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the United States of America started to use gender instead of sex. In 2011, the FDA reversed its position and began using sex again as the biological classification and gender “as a person’s self representation as male or female, or how that person is responded to by social institutions based on the individual’s gender presentation.”⁶ Since then in gender studies the term gender refers to proposed social and cultural constructions of masculinities and femininities. In this context, gender explicitly excludes reference to biological differences, and it only focuses on cultural differences, which was propounded by various psychoanalysts like Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray (French Psychoanalysts) and American feminist Judith Butler.