The Need for Gender Neutrality in Provisions Relating to Rape

The definition of gender and its various types other than the conventional one might be one of the most pondered questions of the 21st century. According to the World Health Organization gender is defined as ‘ the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed including norms, behaviours, and roles associated with a particular gender. Although understood together, gender is different from sex as the latter is just the physical characteristics of the person while the former is the complex inter-relationship between physical or body features, identity or the internal experience of gender and lastly the social gender or the way by which a person communicates one’s gender to others through the way of clothing, hairstyles and other mannerisms. Assignment of certain characteristics that are socially perceived for a gender gives rise to the ideas of gender roles. Commonly male and female gender roles are created by society and are attributed to certain features. Among many, the characteristic feature of a female is to be vulnerable or weak and to be protected and males are supposed to not be vulnerable on the core can be alleged to be the basis of the law relating to rape when it tends to protect the weak against the wrong.