The word gender describes the state of being male, female, or neither. Some languages have a system of grammatical gender (also known as noun classes); while a noun may be described as "masculine" or "feminine" by convention, this has no necessary connection to the natural gender of the thing described. Likewise, a wide variety of phenomena may have gendered characteristics ascribed to them, either by analogy to male and female bodies, such as with the gender of connectors and fasteners, or due to social norms, such as interpreting the color pink as feminine and blue as masculine. In social sciences, the word "gender" is sometimes used in contrast to biological sex, to emphasise a social, cultural or psychological dimension. The discipline of gender studies investigates the nature of sex and gender in a social context.
Gender comes from Middle English gendre, from Latin genus, all meaning "kind", "sort", or "type". Ultimately from the proto Indo European root, gen, which is also the root for "kind", "king" and many others. It appears in Modern French in the word genre (type, kind) and is related to the Greek root gen- (to produce), appearing in gene, genesis and oxygen. As a verb, it is used for to breed in the King James Bible:

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Advertising and the voice of authority - men have it, women don't - Considers the damages advertising can do to the image of women, and what girls continue to have as their role models.
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Authority and TV ads - Review of studies showing that in advertising the voice of authority is nearly always male.
Calvin Klein's real people - CK ads replace skinny models with fat ones. Are they depicting real people or having a stab at their critics. Salon article.
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Madison Avenue versus The Feminine Mystique - How the advertising industry responded to the onset of the modern women's movement.
Shift in women's sports advertising - Explores the representation of the female body in sports advertising.
The armored knight of the 20th century - Examines how advertising exaggerates the competitive instinct in men.
What kind of mother are you? - Marketing mavens dissect moms for eager advertisers. Salon article.
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