Abstract

The inclusion and use of the gender concept is reviewed in seven mexican government documents on health and nutrition. The subjacent rationality is interpreted in order to conclude that there is a complex and iniqual process of sensibilization in government staff and researchers about this topic. The attention is drawn to a careful review of its aplication in order to clarify if the concept is used as a synonimous of women, as a comparison between women and men, or as a tool for the relational analysis of the hierarchy that establishes social differences between sexes. The cases where the concept is wrongly used as a substitution of sex are documented, because sex is a descriptive category of biological, fisiological, genetical and hormonal components (mensurables data) and gender is an analitical category that explains the subordination, the differences in the empowerment and its effects in people's health condition (relational analitical category); thus, the dialectical relationship between biology and society can be analized.