SEX AND GENDER

Sex and Gender

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Sex and Gender

Various cultures and societies experience differing norms and standards. Some allow racism while others protect it; some look for gender differences while other consider all equal; the discrimination prevails in some while equality dominate others. All the societies work on different basis and norms. These variations bind the people living at different places into communities and social structures. This paper focuses on such discriminating issue, rather a controversy, which had occurred in the year 2009. It assesses the case of Caster Semenya in terms of the gender controversy that the champion had to experience.

Sex and Gender

According to Keen1, the term sex and gender are used interchangeably in many societies; some tend to differentiate between the two. This distinction between sex and gender emerged in the late 60s in the Anglo-Saxon feminist and it covers a major change in thinking. The term "sex" refers to the strictly biological characteristics that distinguish women and men. While, gender return us more directly to the set of implicit and explicit rules governing relations women / men and giving them work, values, responsibilities and obligations making them distinct. Bornstein1 advocates that these rules apply at three levels; the cultural substrate (norms and values ??of society), institutions (family, education system and employment, etc) and the socialization process, particularly within the family. This shows the challenge of both scientific and policy of the sex / gender distinction: to show that the concept of gender is not as explanatory as had been claimed and demonstrate the validity of an approach to reality in terms of gender relations rather than in terms of an alleged nature. As a result of establishing social difference between men and women, are generated conditions of marginalization, discrimination, and therefore inequality in all areas, which manifest and affect differently to one and other. Because being different does not mean being mixed, it is important to recognize the difference between the concepts of sex and gender, a word widely used in recent years which have given misinterpretation as is often associated only with women's issues. According to anthropologist Marta Lamas, gender is the set of ideas about sexual difference that feminine and masculine characteristics attributed to each sex, their activities and behaviours, and spheres of life while sex refers to the biological differences and natural that people have at birth. Thus, sex is determined by genetic, hormonal, physiological and functional human beings we differ biologically, and gender is the set of social and cultural characteristics assigned to individuals based on their sex. Therefore, the way we relate women and men is determined by the rules of a legal, social, religious, traditions, rules and roles that are the foundation of a culture in a given historical moment.

Specialists in the field explain that through culture are transmitted norms and values ??of a society, whose presence is achieved through the process of socialization and learning in social institutions such as family, school, church, state and ...