Which concept explains how society shapes expectations for behaviours and…

Concept: Sex is the biological classification of a body as male or female; gender is the set of behaviours, roles and expectations that a society attaches to that classification. When those expectations are produced and transmitted by social institutions — family, language, schooling, media, work — instead of issuing from the body itself, the arrangement is described as socially constructed: it is learned, reinforced through everyday practice, and varies across societies and historical periods.

Application: The stem describes exactly this process. A person is first identified as male or female, and society then supplies the expectations about how that person should behave and which roles they may occupy. The shaping agent named in the stem is society, and what is shaped is gendered expectation, so the governing concept is the social construction of gender.

Cross-check — how the neighbouring concepts differ:

• Biological determinism: traces behaviour, ability and social role to bodily causes such as genes, hormones and anatomy, so the shaping agent is nature rather than society.

• Gender essentialism: holds that masculinity and femininity are inherent, unchanging qualities of men and women, so gendered traits are treated as given rather than as the outcome of a social process.

• Cultural relativism: is a methodological principle for interpreting a practice by the standards of the culture in which it occurs; it guides how a researcher judges unfamiliar customs, not how role expectations come into being.

Result: The concept that explains society-made expectations for behaviour and roles following identification as male or female is the social construction of gender.