Gender

Gender is a symbol administered by a specific power system through a gender system composed of political, religious and scientific institutions.

In the majority of societies, the single, dominant gender system is a patriarchy.

The defining characteristic of gender is how it binds the identity of a person to the sexual characteristics of their body and ascribes them, based on this, either the role of woman or man. This is then used to restrict who someone can be, what they are entitled to and what rights they will be afforded or denied.

Gender is also used to explain the world in terms of gender, such as when a given quality is attributed to one's gender only if it matches that gender's stereotype. For example, a compassionate woman will be stripped from the merit of having such a quality by having it attributed to her as an innate aspect of her being a woman, whereas a compassionate man will be considered virtuous or have this quality attributed to his own effort to become compassionate. While of course one could also describe this man's compassion as innate, they couldn't attribute it to his gender.