Written by Najwa Bashir

Multiple times in our lives, we have come across situations where we are asked about our gender. Whether it is when filling out any form for applying for a job post, applying to create an account in a bank, or taking admission to a university or elsewhere, there is always a question asking about our gender.

In fact, many quantitative study results and demographics reports in the social sciences are also linked to the gender of the people who took part. To show gender, people usually use a dichotomous variable, which has two possible answers: woman or man or female or male. However, gender is not a binary variable, and it has rarely been defined properly.

So what is gender? This article will define and explain gender as a psychological construct. 

Gender as a Psychological Construct

At birth, every person possesses innate sex traits, which indicate whether they identify as male, female, or intersex. Gender, on the other hand, is made up of society and is based on the rules, behaviors, and societal roles that people are supposed to play based on their sex.

It is not a casual or ideological phrase to say that gender is a social creation. A lot of people would be happier and less stressed if they did not have to worry about how their gender affected how other people saw them or their ability to reach their goals, or if they did not have to question whether they were living up to the expectations that others had of them because of their sexuality. In all of these ways, gender ideas that are formed by society can be very bad for people.

Difference between Sex and Gender

The terms “sex” and “gender” might confuse most of the people as they are used interchangeably. However, they both are different terms with different meanings.

According to the experts, “sex” refers to the biological group of “male” or “female,” which is shown by differences in genetic makeup and reproductive tissue and function. Men and women, on the other hand, have different cultural, social, and psychological meanings. This is called “gender”. People are born male or female, so “male” and “female” are separate sex categories. “Masculine” and “feminine,” on the other hand, are gender continuums, meaning that everyone has some manly and feminine traits and qualities. 

Gender Roles

Besides sex and gender, other terms are used in the same way but are not always clear, such as gender roles. Gender roles are the actions, thoughts, and mental traits that people in a society decide are masculine or feminine. In American society, gender roles are usually thought of in terms of gender stereotypes, which are beliefs and assumptions about how men and women usually act, what they like, and how they behave. The way a person feels about being male or female is called their gender identity. While someone’s sexual preference is how they feel about people of the same sex, the opposite sex, or both sexes, during sexual activity. There are important differences between these terms. We won’t go into each one in length, but it’s important to know that sex, gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation don’t always match up. Someone can be biologically male but identify as female and be drawn to women, or they can have other identities and preferences.

Gender as a Set of Power Relationships

According to some psychologists, “gender” is not just about differences between men and women or how beliefs about gender are shown in social interactions by actions that support those beliefs, it is involved in the social structures that set up power relationships in society as a whole. From this point of view, “gender” refers to a set of power relationships where, without any other information or meanings, being male means authority, status, competence, social power, and influence, and being female means lack of authority, low status, stupidity, and little power and influence. This point of view works well with the idea that gender also shows more good connections with being female (like caring for others) and more bad connections with being male (like being violent). From this point of view, the point is that these traits are not linked to social standing and power in the same way. For psychologists who first notice that gender represents a set of power relationships, they often look at how an interesting behavior (like leadership, marital conflict, or task performance) happens in social structures (like pairs, organizations, and society as a whole) that are gendered.

For instance, a partner might stay in a violent relationship because she does not have the money to leave. Suppose there is domestic strife and maybe even violence when one person has full or partial control of money and resources outside of the family. In that case, that should be taken into account when trying to figure out what keeps the violence going and the relationship going. Realizing how important the dyad’s power structure is could lead to changes; balancing the balance by moving some financial and resource power could actually change the way people act when they are fighting. Also, researchers who have looked into how well organizational systems for reporting sexual harassment work have found that women rarely use these systems to report sexual harassment in places where men hold most of the power. In this situation, fears of revenge are very reasonable and shared by many people. It’s hard to understand why these events aren’t reported more often if you don’t know how power works in groups between men and women.

To sum up, psychologists have found “gender” to be a useful concept in at least three ways: (a) it helps them divide people into male and female groups and study how differences in behavior, performance, and traits are linked to those differences (whether the suggested cause is biological, socialization, or social location); (b) it helps them figure out how gender might relate to differences between men and women; and (c) it helps them figure out how gender shapes the social institutions in which men and women work.

Most people see these three methods as options, and they are often taken separately from each other. One of the most important changes in recent years is that people are becoming more aware that these three methods can work together and be combined.