Interesting US story about the origins of using the word “gender,” for sex. In law, you can point to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Ginsburg was then a professor at Columbia Law School. Around 1970, she and her lawyer husband (his firm) took on a sex discrimination case. She was preparing to argue the case, Moritz v Commissioner (decided 1972, before the Tenth Circuit.

The case challenged the IRS for refusing to grant a then-existing caretaker tax deduction to a single man for taking care of his mother. Had he been female, he would have been given the deduction.

Ginsburg’s assistant, who was typing up her argument, suggested that Ginsburg use the word “gender” instead. Ginsburg stated:

“I owe it all to my secretary at Columbia Law School, who said, ‘I’m typing all these briefs and articles for you and the word sex, sex, sex is on every page,’ ” Ginsburg said.

“Don’t you know that those nine men (on the Supreme Court)--they hear that word, and their first association is not the way you want them to be thinking? Why don’t you use the word gender? It is a grammatical term and it will ward off distracting associations.’ ”

And so, Ginsburg did use “gender.” Other people, especially feminists, followed suit. There was no intention to avoid biology in the usage change or to have sex mean gender identity.

Among other places, the story is told here. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-11-21-mn-59217-story.html

Now, with some attempting tl “gender” to overtake “sex,” some feminists are going back to using the word “sex” to mean discrimination based on biological sex.

She wrote about the story an article in a Law Review article also. See also Gender in the Supreme Court: The 1973 and 1974 terms, 1975 Supreme Court Review 1.

Not sure how much this says about what she thought about gender identity issues. It simply shows the benign origin of the use of gender for sex. US feminists remain in two camps on gender and sex language.