What is Gender?

---

“Gender“
refers to
the sum total of the social and cultural characteristics
of one sex,
be it male or female.

What is the difference between the concepts of sex and gender?

• Sex as a human characteristic refers to a biological fact: the difference between male and female. Societies tend to attribute all kinds of meanings to the two sexes. Over time, these cultural meanings develop into gender roles or identities we call masculine and feminine, or male and female. Gender refers to these historically, socially, and culturally construed differences between the sexes.

What is “gender portrayal?“

• Portrayal literally refers to the art of portraiture, drawing a portrait of someone, and this already presupposes a certain degree of accuracy or the absence thereof; a portrait is a re-presentation, and this already suggests the existence of a gap between the real person and the depicted person, no matter how true to reality the portrait may turn out to be. Moreover, the concept “portrayal“ also indicates agency: someone is actually in charge of creating the image.
• In essence, gender portrayal, or the depiction of the feminine or masculine as a gender role, is a cultural phenomenon, embedded in historical processes. Gender roles, in other words, are not fixed but changeable. Evidence of changing views of gender, but also of competing gender views, can be found throughout society - in politics, education, health care, business, media, and so on. This already suggests that gender is not an issue that solely applies to women. The fact that gender roles are contingent means that male and female roles are always evolving, in flux, and that thus any proper insight into gender portrayal, and how it is or can be manipulated, involves an understanding of how female as well as male roles are represented.