That is not what I learned in school and in the books I used during my studies.
Gender has always been either the male or female division of a species.
I said it was more properly referred to as the sex of the individual, not that people don't commonly use gender as a substitute for sex. Prior to the 1970s, however, no one asked what gender the baby was, or what gender an animal was. They asked its sex. I mean literally no one.
Gender is more properly applied to linguistics.
