gender

Meaning: Gender refers to the social, cultural, and psychological side of being male, female, or another identity. Sex refers to biological traits such as chromosomes, hormones, and anatomy. Four related terms are often tested. Gender identity is a person's internal sense of their gender. Gender expression is how that identity is shown outwardly. Gender roles are society's norms for behavior. Gender socialization is the learning of those norms from agents such as family, peers, school, and media.

On the MCAT: Passages describe gender differences in pay, education, health, or political power, and ask which theory explains them. Functionalism has traditionally described complementary roles. Conflict theory and feminist theory stress power inequality, such as patriarchy. Symbolic interactionism looks at how everyday interactions create and reinforce gender. Other questions ask which socialization agent explains a behavior, or ask you to read a graph of a gender gap and judge whether the data show a difference in outcome or a cause.

Common confusion: Gender and sex are not interchangeable. Gender identity is also not the same as sexual orientation, which describes attraction. Gender norms differ between cultures and change over history, and that variation is the evidence that they are socially shaped rather than purely biological.