6. GENDER

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WHAT WE MEAN BY "GENDER"
In everyday English, we use the word "sex" when we are talking about physical or biological differences between men and women.

In everyday English we use the word "gender" when we are talking about the different social roles of men and women.

In English Grammar, we use the word "gender" to classify nouns and pronouns according to whether they are female, male or neither.

GRAMMATICAL CLASSIFICATIONS BY GENDER

Feminine Gender words are used only to describe females;

Masculine Gender words are used only to describe males;

Gender Neutral words are used to describe

• people or animals that might be either female or male; and
• things that might be either female or male; and
• things that are definitely not either female or male.

       

                

    

	FEMININE GENDER	MASCULINE GENDER	GENDER NEUTRAL
1	Female	Male
2	Woman	Man	Person
3	Mother	Father	Parent
4	Sister	Brother	Sibling
5	Daughter	Son	Child
6	Aunty	Uncle
7	Niece	Nephew
8	Grandmother	Grandfather
9	Granddaughter	Grandson
10			Chair
11	Mare	Stallion	Horse
12	SHE	HE	I YOU IT WE THEY

All of the words in rows 1-11 of the above table are nouns.

The words in row 12 are examples of pronouns.

Examples

Anna is a female name. She is a female pronoun.

We can say "Anna is tall", or we can say "She is tall".

John is a male name. He is a male pronoun.

We can say "John is tall", or we can say "He is tall".

Australia is gender neutral. It is a gender neutral pronoun.

We can say "Australia is a great country" or we can say "It is a great country".

When we do not know the sex of a dog, the word "dog" is gender neutral.

We can say "The dog is scary", or "It is scary".

When we do know the sex of a dog, the word dog is either a Masculine Gender word, or a Feminine Gender word.

We can say "She is well trained" if it is a female dog, or "He is well trained" if it is a male dog.

Traditionally, when we do not know the sex of a person, we use the masculine pronoun "he" .

We can say "The surgeon has a good reputation," or we can say "He has a good reputation."

As our expectations about the social roles of men and women are changing, it is now common and acceptable to use the pronoun "she" instead of "he" if we do not know the sex of a person*.

We can say The surgeon has a good reputation," or we can say "She has a good reputation."

*Using "He" when we do not know the gender of a person is still common and acceptable.

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