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doi:10.1152/japplphysiol.00376.2005. Editorial
behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated “genetic background and gender on hypertension” are exam-
with one sex. Gender (noun) is derived from the Latin word ples of publications where specificity and consistency between
“genus” referring to kind or race (8). Gender (noun) is defined using sex and gender are imperative because sex and gender
as “a kind, sort, or class referring to the common sort of can be differentially related to health outcomes in humans.
people” (8). It is through an understanding of these principal Across science, there is growing interest in understanding how
definitions that scientists can apply these terms in a specific levels of stress relate to depression, alcoholism, hypertension,
manner to sex-based research. and cardiovascular risk in individuals whose stress may be
After the late 20th century legislation on sex-based research directly related to particular gender roles and/or socioeconomic
initiatives, the IOM established the Committee on Understand- variables.
ing the Biology of Sex and Gender Difference to outline the There are also an increased number of investigations on how
most important issues and establish future direction for sex- hormones affect human physiology and human behavior. An
based research (1). Included in this essential IOM report was a article by Sheri Berenbaum (2), “Effects of early androgens on
recommendation for using the terms sex and gender in re- sex-typed activities and interests in adolescents with congenital
search. The recommendation identified by the 2001 IOM report adrenal hyperplasia,” succeeds in examining both sex and
calls for researchers to clarify and be specific in their use of the gender in humans. The report examines mechanisms of steroid-
terms sex and gender in publications and, by doing so, create mediated development of the human brain and includes a
consistency across the literature. The Committee provided model that considers behaviors like toy play, playmate prefer-
three guidelines for using sex and gender correctly in human ences, and gender identity in children tracked through child-
and animal research. First, in the study of human subjects, the hood to evaluate the effects of exposure to prenatal androgens
term sex should be used as a classification according to the while considering cultural exposure to gender ideology in the
reproductive organs and functions that derive from the chro- development of behaviors. In another topic related to hor-
mosomal complement. Second, in the study of human subjects, mones, recognition of the sex and gender difference will serve
the term gender should be used to refer to a person’s self-
representation as male or female, or how that person is re-
sponded to by social institutions on the basis of the individual’s
gender presentation. Third, in most studies of nonhuman ani-
mals the term sex should be used. Although clearly any
discipline or author could choose to define sex and gender
according to their intentional meaning, these are a standard set
of definitions for use in sex-based research and this is the
theoretical basis for the use of these terms in other disciplines
(1, 4, 11, 12). For physiologists who have only recently begun
to use the term gender rather than sex in their writing, these
definitions will prove to have utility in a number of circum-
stances.
Using the IOM term specificity as a guide, the vast majority
of articles published in APS journals are reporting on sex in
humans and animals, not gender. Of the article titles examined
by the authors of this article from 1960 to 2004 in the Journal
of Applied Physiology, all titles using gender were sex-based Fig. 1. Number of articles titles from 1960 to 2004 examined by the authors
investigations (Fig. 1). APS article titles that indicate sex-based in which the term gender was used as an equivalent term for sex in sex-based
research was conducted on “age, gender, and ethnicity” or research publications in the Journal of Applied Physiology.