Student being forced to confuse sex and gender in essay or will lose marks

As long as she's not doing a science degree just a sentence in brackets (For clarity in this essay I have used the terms 'sex' and 'gender' synonymously.)

I think where possible she should name the author(s) of the texts in the essay, eg Smith etal uses sex and gender interchangeably.

This is not her hill to die on.
I would advise her to write it in the way required by the university and move on. She will have plenty of opportunity to protest her opinions in life if she feels that strongly.

Given that she keeps her views secret socially, I can't imagine she'd find it that hard to do.

I teach in a university. How far to take this depends how brave she is, and I note from a distance that there have been some very odd things happening at Bristol (and by “odd” I mean “absolutely outrageous”). If there was any suggestion that she had been marked down for even pointing out that this is a contested area, I would hope she would appeal. It’s tricky because she needs this same institution to award her a degree that she deserves and she shouldn’t be put in a position where she’s in danger of sacrificing her own ambition in order to present a coherent argument in an essay.

I would really hope that there are some adults in the relevant department. If this is a tutor telling her that she must state that sex=gender, does that mean a PhD student taking some tutorials? Might be worth her while talking to a more senior member of the department.

If the marker tells her how to get good marks then she has to listen to that ultimately. But I would have thought as long as she sticks to the accepted practice of her discipline, and sets out her reasoning, it would be wrong for the marker to reduce marks for that reason.

If its simply that the texts use 'gender' when they mean 'sex' (ie meaning whether someone is male or female) then it's not surprising as the two are synonyms in day to day English, and lots of academic works use it that way. She could just note this to explain the terms that come up.in quotes. Or she could set out her definitions, refer to an academic source who uses those definitions, but also acknowledge that there are other understandings of these concepts and definitions of these terms have changed over time.

It really depends on the specifics and how far she wants to push it, how many marks the piece of work is worth etc.

Yes, I would just add a paragraph (or a few sentences in the introduction) explaining how the terminology is used differently by different publications, without expressing her own opinion. That would be academically objective.

Write something along the lines of the terms sex and gender are subject to strain and slippage but in the context of the texts discussed they mean xyz and are used interchangeably (ref a, ref b, ref c).

It’s a student essay not a piece of work that will be published under her name so I don’t think she needs to ensure it expresses beliefs that she subscribes to in the way something would be if it was out in public with her name on it.

I would suggest she writes it as the authorities demand but with a disclaimer in a footnote reserving her right to disagree. Something like ‘for the purposes of this essay I will be using the terms to mean…. However, I note that…’

Are the texts she is using American as they use gender for sex. If so, could she clarify in her essay the common definitions in each country and also state that gender is a contested idea? Not untrue, critical thought process, not outing as GC.