Gender refers to the grouping of people into men and women, and the social and cultural roles, behaviors, and expectations that different societies associate with being male or female.

When someone refers to gender roles, they're talking about expectations a society has about how males and females should behave. Gender stereotypes are simplified, fixed ideas about what all boys or all girls are like.

The word also appears in grammar, where languages like Spanish assign gender to nouns: el libro (masculine) for book, la mesa (feminine) for table, even though books and tables don't have a biological sex.