"At what point in time did the term gender replace sex for the sexes?"
The shift from using "sex" to "gender" to describe categories of male and female didn’t happen at a single, precise moment but evolved over time, particularly in the 20th century. Historically, "sex" referred to the biological distinction between male and female—chromosomes, hormones, and anatomy—while "gender" was a grammatical term, like masculine or feminine nouns in languages such as French or Latin.
The pivot began in academic and psychological circles. In 1955, sexologist John Money introduced "gender role" to describe the social behaviors and expectations tied to being male or female, distinct from biological sex. He argued that while sex is innate, gender roles are learned—think of it as nature versus nurture. His work, controversial as it later became (especially with the David Reimer case), planted the seed for separating the two concepts.
By the 1970s, feminist scholars like Ann Oakley in her 1972 book *Sex, Gender and Society* built on this, pushing "gender" as a term for the cultural and social constructs around sex. This caught traction as second-wave feminism challenged traditional roles—sex was biology, but gender was how society dressed it up. The distinction gave activists and academics a way to talk about inequality without reducing it to immutable biology.
In everyday language, though, the swap took longer. Dictionaries like Merriam-Webster note "gender" expanding beyond grammar by the mid-20th century, but it wasn’t until the 1980s and 1990s—amid rising gender studies and identity politics—that "gender" started overtaking "sex" in public discourse for discussing male/female categories. Legal and medical forms, for instance, began favoring "gender" over "sex" by the late 20th century, reflecting this cultural shift.
So, no exact date, but the tipping point spans the 1970s to 1990s, driven by academia, feminism, and eventually mainstream adoption. Today, "gender" often implies identity and expression, while "sex" sticks closer to biology—though the lines still blur depending on who’s talking.
