New paper with language recommendations on sex and gender identity

[DrKarleenG]

I have just had a paper published that argues it is time to ditch “gender” except in relation to “gender identity”. I thought some here might be interested. Summary excerpt below.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-025-03310-3

"To facilitate clear communication, terms that clearly distinguish between sex, the social expectations of the sexes, and gender identity should be used. Here follows proposed terminology to improve clarity in relation to these concepts.
First, when referring to the reproductive categorizations of male and female, the term “sex” should be used and “gender” avoided. Furthermore, the scientific terms for the sexes of “male” and “female” should not be used to describe gender identities. This is particularly important in data collection where it is likely that many respondents will interpret questions with the answers of “male” and “female” as asking for their sex when the inquiry is intended to be in relation to gender identity (Balarajan et al., 2011). Accurate data collection on sex can be promoted by asking individuals to state their “sex as recorded at birth” or “birth sex.” Where it is necessary to define sex (e.g., in scientific, legal, or medical settings), the description should be in relation to sex as a reproductive classification rather than sex characteristics.

Second, when referring to the expectations that societies and cultures place on boys and girls, men and women and the resultant impact of this, the descriptors “social expectations of the sexes” or “social construction of the sexes” should be used. It has recently become common when discussing the interaction between sex and the social expectations of the sexes for the conjunction “sex/gender” to be used (e.g., Galinsky et al., 2024) but this should also be avoided due to the risk of confusion or conflation of the social expectations of the sexes and gender identity.

Third, when referring to gender identity, the term “gender identity” rather than “gender” should be used as the abbreviation risks confusion with sex. In circumstances where it is necessary to discuss issues related to individuals who have changed their legal sex, the term “certificated sex” or “legal sex” may be appropriate (United Kingdom Supreme Court, 2025)."

Well that’s pretty clear and sensible. Is this for newspapers etc or just scientific journals?

Oh I just reread- it’s your journal paper?! Terrific! Excellent work.

Good luck, OP. Having clarity of language is a good step forward.

Thanks for sharing. I work in health research and this use of wooly language around sex is going to cause a shit show for years to come. Imagine trying to do a systematic review and some of the studies use the term sex, some use gender but mean sex and some use gender but mean gender identity.

Thanks for the link, it looks like an interesting read. I have zero knowledge of journal's, is it likely they can get it cancelled or withdrawn, I only ask because it's what happens to papers nowadays.

Speaking as a librarian who deals with this day in day out:

this is licensed under a CC BY licence at the moment. That means that anyone can copy, repost and reuse this PDF for any purpose as long as they attribute it to the original publication. While it’s not impossible that the publisher would retract it, they cannot control what is done with the downloaded CC BY versions as long as it’s within the uses permitted by the licence.

what this really means is that downloading and reposting it as far as you can at the moment is not a bad idea! I’m sure that the article processing charge for this has been covered, so the risk of the publisher rescinding it due to non-payment is minimal, but still - you can reuse and repost this version as much as you like under its licence terms, regardless of what may or may not happen in future.

aWUBBAWUBBA - thanks for the clarification, I have downloaded it to read later. 👍

I was talking with someone about this yesterday. There's a decade or more of data collection within which there is lack of clarity on whether information on sex has been collected. It'll have to be ditched. There are similar issues with other language issues- for example, there's just been a new Cochrane review published on skin-to-skin at birth. Some research had to be excluded because language of "parents" rather than "mothers" created uncertainty as to just who the baby had skin-to-skin with.

Please share it with orgs when you see them using unclear language!

Congrats!

Are you or the journal expecting a lot of pushback, or is there now more space in the field for diverse views?

Can you tell us anything about the publishing process? It might encourage junior colleagues to know more, especially if this was a typical experience.

Thank you!

i’ll try to read it properly later, but just skimming the start I like the phrase ‘social expectations of the sexes’ which I think is useful now that the way we used to use the word ‘gender’ has become so corrupted by ‘gender identity’.

I’m ‘social expectations of the sexes critical’!

Looks very comprehensive with lots of contemporary literature reviewed. Well done indeed.

Maybe the editors of Glamour magazine would benefit from reading it!

Was it difficult at all to get a journal to accept it? With a lot of North American influence in the editorial process, it can be a bit difficult getting past the gatekeepers sometimes.

Just following the link provided by the journal to the author's ORCID profile I see the OP has published a good deal of material on this already. Plus material on breastfeeding. 'Well worth a visit' as they used to say on Blue Peter. Seeing as quite a few people on here seem to work in the education sector, healthcare or do research, it's a valuable resource.

I review a lot and increasingly seeing sloppy reporting of sex and gender, often 'identify as male' in the participant info. I challenge it but this is good to have a citation to refer them to. I don't care if the study is on gender or sex or people who identify as something or other but they need to be specific, accurate and precise if they're explaining the sample in an academic article.

Everywhere!!!

I think it's definitely easier to write and publish on things related to the conflict between sex and gender identity now than it was a few years ago. There are of course, journals that will not be receptive however, there are plenty that are. I sometimes contact editors directly before submission describing the paper I am working on and asking for an indication of whether they would be amenable to considering a manuscript on that subject. I think that this helps to prepare the ground a bit.

The journal this paper is published in is very old school in truly welcoming diverse viewpoints and encouraging discussion- even to the point of publishing letters to the editor in relation to papers published in other journals where the editor was unwilling to allow dissent to be expressed (i.e. rejected the letter). So, I am not expecting any trouble.

Agree completely. I used to like the team gender critical, as meaning critical of gender as a system which places certain expectations on people according to their sex, and leads to the same behaviour being read differently according to the sex of the person involved. But that meaning has now been completely lost.

Gah! yes, it's incredibly how poorly many researchers are handling this issue.

These other papers may also assist.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10805-025-09605-3

https://www.womenandbirth.org/article/S1871-5192(24)00314-7/fulltext

Am pleased to see this published in AoSB & looking forward to reading it, your précis looks very sensible.

It's really a case of stating the obvious, but apparently it needed to be said!!

Kathleen Stock did similar in her book, and I find it very clear. Gender should just mean gender identity now, and sex means actual biological sex.

It's annoying that a word - gender - has been hijacked by this nonsense though.

Thank you so much for the link and for writing this OP! I will read properly later.

I work in medical genetics, and publish and review quite a bit and I correct 'gender' every time I see it (which is far too often)
Great to have your article as a reference if someone disagrees!!

Are you saying that all population health statistics and research using HES and other similar sources have to be discarded?

(Asking because throughout every non-clinical healthcare dataset I've seen there are a small number of "men" receiving care for gynecological disease, and conversely, for ~30 years)

Edited for clarity.

Are you saying that all population health statistics and research using HES and other similar sources have to be discarded?

There's always going to be errors in data collection and recording. IMO, it's unlikely to have made a huge difference if sex has been recorded incorrectly when you are just doing work where you are adjusting for sex as a confounder.

Where the major problems are likely to arise is research looking at the effect of sex on a particular health condition (and the sex differences between men and women in medicine have long been ignored). If the true effect is small but then your pool of women is being muddied by an unknown number of men (who identify as women) being included and an unknown number of women (who identify as men or non binary or aliens) being excluded you risk your findings not being statistically significant.

I'm a simpleton. I'm clear on the meaning of sex, but if social expectations of sexual identity and gender are different, what is gender?