Time to Dump the Sex/Gender Dichotomy for Science and Society

Women have been historically underrepresented in every step of scientific enquiry and, therefore, the knowledge of female bodies is lacking. Now the tide is turning to bring focus on the role of sex and gender in human health and disease. The increasing demands by publishers, funders, and policymakers to pay attention to both sex and gender are commendable. Nevertheless, the premise of the definitions of sex, framed as biological attributes of an individual, contrasting with gender, which is defined through the sociocultural roles, identities, and power structures, carries all pitfalls of the nature–nurture divide, undermining that they are deeply intertwined and interact continuously across the lifespan, shaping physiology and behavior. Current scientific studies rarely disentangle the two for etiological purposes, for their respective contributions to health outcomes. Despite this, there is a push to use both terms appropriately in research and society. This invariably results in the oversimplification of complex processes of sex/gender intertwining, leading to incomplete or misleading causal inferences. Here, I make a case for retiring the sex/gender etiological split in the scientific and public discourse and embracing sex/gender intertwining, rather than minimizing it. This will then enable researchers to focus on how they interact with other variables to produce phenotypes, bringing scientific clarity.