ABSTRACT
This chapter defines sex, gender, and gender roles. It provides a historical overview of gender throughout the world, in the Unites States, and for African Americans. Sex is defined as the biological distinction of being male or female. Males and females are distinguished from one another based on the possession of biological traits, for example, hormones, genitals, and chromosomes. Gender, a social construct, has to do with social and psychological characteristics of being masculine or feminine. Throughout human history, the roles that males and females assumed depended on the type of society they lived in. In Women, Race, and Class, Angela Davis outlines gender roles of women during the colonial period in the United States and how these roles changed during the industrial period. During slavery, African American males and females as chattel were reduced to units of labor and instruments for the purpose of breeding. The roles of African American women were critical to the Civil Rights movement.
