When did people stop saying "sex" and start saying "gender"?

[drspouse]

Just that really.
I am meaning when they started using it to mean "men and women" rather than when did the term "gender" emerge to refer to sex stereotyped roles etc.
Does anyone know if there's anything interesting/scholarly written about this (though I'd also be interested to know if anyone remembers being specifically told to use the term, or if they have seen a change through their working life)?
I cannot remember what was standard practice when I was younger (I'm early 50s) or if there was a change though my vague memory is that things used to say "sex: m/f".

Sex and gender are two different things.

I know they are. Do you really think I don't know they are? Look where I'm posting.

But we are being asked to say "gender: male or female" all the time now.

People talk about what "gender" their baby will be and have "gender reveal" and "gender disappointment".

They talk about "gender based violence". "Gender discrimination".

It's not all TRAs. It's society in general and I want to know when it started.

The Wikipedia entry on it is quite interesting en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender although I don't know how accurate it is.

In my experience (science and healthcare) gender and sex are often used interchangeably, but not for any woke/PC reason AFAI can tell.

I think they are taught at school. My DS aged eight says gender all the time when he means sex. Although sometimes he says gender when he means gender.

I think with my children they say gender instead of sex a/ because that is the word used at school and b/ because they don't want to say sex, which they know is a word with other meanings. Like they don't like saying "bloody" even when it is an adjective ("the bloody handkerchief") rather than a (not very sweary IMO) swear word.

I get the impression it's a recent thing. The first few times I heard people use it in relation to their baby, I just assumed they were being prudish about using the word 'sex'.

When I was a child in the 70s and 80s I don't remember us EVER hearing the word gender and having discussions about gender as apposed to sex. We all know they are different, it just seems the whole emphasis on gender came later, more from mid 90s onwards. In everyday convos I mean.

same as moveablefeast - no recollection at all in 70s and 80s.
Might be a developed British prudishness re sex. Or something more sinister.

I've always thought that the use of 'Gender' on forms and suchlike was because people were writing 'Yes please' and 'More' when asked about sex.

I'm not convinced it's British prudishness - I've no evidence, but it's always seemed more like an American thing to me. It would be interesting to track the word usage there too. Isn't there a Google tool that traces word popularity over time? I bet you see a spike in 2010 or thereabouts.

I get the impression it's a recent thing.

i do to and I keep now hearing people talk as if they are inter changable.

Though I think gender pay gap rather than sex pay gap has been around quite a while.

It feels recent to me. I remember referring to the sex of my baby at the 20 week scan 16 years ago.

I've always thought that the use of 'Gender' on forms and suchlike was because people were writing 'Yes please' and 'More' when asked about sex.
Oh I do remember those very tedious jokes... especially in secondary school.

silentcrow very interesting, I'll see if I can find anything like that!

It kind of reminds me of that thing, where if you asked a kid in your class to 'use your rubber' you'd get sniggers, so whole swathes of 80s/90s kids referred very properly to erasers. Now everyone calls them rubbers again.

I remember an uptick in the mid-late 80s. Not to the degree that exists now, but people were starting to jump on gender to mean sex, so they didn't have to say the word sex. And by degrees it crept in so it wasn't uncommon.

In retrospect that was a terrible idea. But hindsight is 20/20.

The was a point when it shot up a bit more.

Sex Benders made a less snappy headline than Gender-Benders.

Boy George at al were making headlines and I think there was a definite rise in the word's visibility and therefore popular use from around that point.

I suspect it may sometimes be part of the tendency to use words that sound Latinate rather than plain English because people think it sounds better or more educated or "posher", ignoring the fact (in this instance) that they aren't the same word. Permit, rather than let; endeavour, rather than try; comprehend, rather than understand; gender, rather than sex.
Plausible?

Sex Benders made a less snappy headline than Gender-Benders

Well, no, Boy George et al were actually gender benders, not sex benders. They were men who wore the trappings of femininity.

Isn't there a Google tool that traces word popularity over time? Yes. I bet someone over on Academics' Corner knows what it is. I've been trying to find it, but I can't remember how. (the Google tool, not Academics' Corner.)

I think they just dont like the word sex. It annoys me, I change it on forms.

WOW!

Here you go

Female sex vs female gender in Google books.

Female sex hasn't actually declined since 1920 but "female gender" appeared from nowhere in about 1970 and increased till about 1995 when it's remained steady (they don't do past 2008). It's still not as common as "female sex".

"Male gender" appeared at exactly the same time and has almost exactly the same trajectory.

dolores I googled "Google tool to trace word usage over time".

trends.google.com/trends/

drspouse THAT'S IT! Thank you!

Plausible?

Very. Lexical choices are influenced by people's desire to sound posher, more educated, more informed, and generally better than their peers.

Mr PARKLIFE of the floppy long hair and dubious radio high jinx being a more extreme example.