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".

Wow, I hadn't expected the usage to go back as far as the 70s. I wonder what happened?

When did we start to see Women's Studies as university courses - or maybe Sociology offered at A-level (ah, anyone else got Maureen Lipman and her "it's an ology!" stuck in their head now? ). It would make sense for a word to come into usage if more people were studying the subject.

Would be fascinating to see the last ten years.

Filled in a survey for my GP surgery the other day. It had Gender m or f.
So even the doctors don't know the difference any more. On a brighter note it did not give the option of 'other'.

When did we start to see Women's Studies as university courses

I think I may have been one of the last cohorts to take a women's studies rather than gender studies course (early 1990s?)

Filled in a survey for my GP surgery the other day. It had Gender m or f.
So even the doctors don't know the difference any more. On a brighter note it did not give the option of 'other'.

It's not that doctors don't know its that the NHS record keeping systems were subject to trans-inclusive lobbying.

I'm pretty sure some of the details were established on one of the Jess Bradley threads.

• Filled in a survey for my GP surgery the other day. It had Gender m or f. So even the doctors don't know the difference any more. On a brighter note it did not give the option of 'other'.*

Ah, a form which is inclusive in being able to annoy both gender critical and genderists at the same time.

I keep posting this but actually 'sex' and 'gender' were used interchangeably by most people as recently as 30 years ago. I'm in my early 50s and in my youth they were synonyms. Gender in the 'social construct' sense was used but mainly by feminist academics or theoreticians. So the strict separation of meaning of 'sex' and 'gender' is actually pretty recent.

I'm always posting the definition from my Collins 1991 dictionary because it illustrates the point completely:

1. a set of two or more grammatical categories into which the nouns of a certain language are divided, sometimes but not necessarily corresponding to the sex of the referent when animate
2. any of the categories, such as masculine, feminine, neuter or common within such a set
3. (informal) the state of being male, female or neuter
4. (informal) all the members of one sex: the female gender.

So forms often used to say 'gender' meaning 'sex' not 'identity gender.' What's confusing now is that the meaning of 'gender' has changed so I wouldn't know if the form was asking for my biological sex or my identity feels.

Some NHS trusts are now using gender in the forms pregnant women have to fill out.

Of all places.

It has been going for a good while now. I really only became aware of the distinction through the transgender issue. In fact, I suspect that the distinction is the new element here, but one that is here to stay.

I have just registered on mumsnet and am shocked to have been asked my 'gender'!

Loving the Google book graph tool!
"Transsexual" starts appearing in the 1960s very similar pattern to "female gender"; "transgender" starts around 1990.

Best I can recall the media talking heads started it in the eighties. About the same time they stopped talking about what they thought and started talking about what they 'believe'.
Social engineering, just as we were warned would happen.