The concept distinguishing the social and cultural dimensions of human identity — roles, behaviors, expressions, and identities associated with being a man, woman, or other category — from biological sex, and the site of sustained political and scholarly debate about what that distinction means and requires.
Gender is one of the most fundamental categories through which human societies have organized themselves, and one of the most contested concepts in contemporary politics. The debate is not about whether gender matters — it clearly does — but about what it is, where it comes from, and what follows from that.