The controversial uses of the concept of gender

Abstract

This short article seeks resize the anthropological knowledge and use it makes of the concepts of sex and gender in feminist studies. Anthropology as well as certain authors who have recently worked on the subject, have favored the notion of sex in view of the continuity that keeps this terminology in studies that reexamine the issue of parenting (Alès, Barraud, 2001). In France, the concept of gender imported from the Anglo-Saxon social sciences, was developed as a category of critical analysis when the categories of biological sciences entered into crisis. The concept of gender has contributed to question the construction of sexual difference from a new angle, stressed the conformities and the inadequate information between sex and gender and the way in which the boundaries between them are flexible (Mathieu, 1991). We will retake the reflection about the banalization of the notion and the risk of essentialism which entails.