How Gender Shapes the World

The multifaceted notion of gender pervades every aspect of life and of living. Gender differences form the basis for family life, patterns of socialization, distribution of tasks, spheres of responsibility, and occupational predilections. An understanding of the nature of gender is central to many disciplines—social sciences such as anthropology, sociology, women’s studies, criminology, linguistics, and biology, to name a few. The way gender is articulated shapes the world of individuals, and of the societies they live in. Gender has three faces. Linguistic Gender (the original sense of ‘gender’ as a linguistic term) is a feature of many languages which reflects division of nouns into grammatical genders (feminine, masculine, neuter, and so on). Natural Gender (or sex) refers to the division of animates into males and females. Social Gender reflects the social implications, and norms, of being a man or a woman (or perhaps something else). Women and men may talk and behave differently, depending on the conventions within the societies they live in. Their role in language maintenance can also vary. This book focuses on how Gender in its many guises is reflected in the languages of the world, and more specifically, the role of Linguistic Gender in the expression of Social Gender and Natural Gender, and also the role of the three faces of gender in human cognition.