What is Gender ?

Gender refers to the differences between men and women. Encyclopædia Britannica notes that gender identity is "an individual's self-conception as being male or female, as distinguished from actual biological sex." Although gender is commonly used interchangeably with sex, within the social sciences it often refers to specifically social differences, known as gender roles. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender)

Gender also refers to the socially constructed differences in roles and responsibilities assigned to women and men in a given culture or location.

The distinction between sex and gender is made to emphasize that everything women and men do, and every thing expected of them, with the exception of their sexually distinct functions(childbearing and breast feeding; impregnation) can change, and does change, over time and according to changing and varied social and cultural factors.(Source: The Oxfam gender training manual)