section_path: Society/Gender
section_name: Gender
paragraph_text: Gender
  
  Human societies typically exhibit gender identities and gender roles that distinguish between masculine and feminine characteristics and prescribe the range of acceptable behaviours and attitudes for their members based on their sex. The most common categorisation is a gender binary of men and women. Some societies recognize a third gender, or less commonly a fourth or fifth. In some other societies, non-binary is used as an umbrella term for a range of gender identities that are not solely male or female.
  
  Gender roles are often associated with a division of norms, practices, dress, behavior, rights, duties, privileges, status, and power, with men enjoying more rights and privileges than women in most societies, both today and in the past. As a social construct, gender roles are not fixed and vary historically within a society. Challenges to predominant gender norms have recurred in many societies. Little is known about gender roles in the earliest human societies. Early modern humans probably had a range of gender roles similar to that of modern cultures from at least the Upper Paleolithic, while the Neanderthals were less sexually dimorphic and there is evidence that the behavioural difference between males and females was minimal.