Before the terminological distinction between biological sex and gender as a role developed, it was uncommon to use the word gender to refer to anything but grammatical categories.[3][1] For example, in a bibliography of 12,000 references on marriage and family from 1900 to 1964, the term gender does not even emerge once.[3] Analysis of more than 30 million academic article titles from 1945 to 2001 showed that the uses of the term "gender", were much rarer than uses of "sex", was often used as a grammatical category early in this period. By the end of this period, uses of "gender" outnumbered uses of "sex" in the social sciences, arts, and humanities.[1] It was in the 1970s that feminist scholars adopted the term gender as way of distinguishing "socially constructed" aspects of male–female differences.
gender means a role.