The role importace of psyho-social and religious factors in formation of gender.

The concept of gender, which is different from sex, is related to the sex roles determined by social and cultural factors which have different contents in different societies. The studies on gender use a comparative method examining male and female streotypes and their interactions with the different scopes of the society. In the first section of the study, in order to explain sex and gender which are the main concepts of the subject matter of this thesis, the history of conception of the gender and certain descriptions related to it were depicted. Afterwards, the most widespread theories that aim to explain how the differences between sexes form and how the sex roles are learned by individuals have been summarized and in addition to this the literature especially related to the concept of gender has been reviewed. In the second part, the transformations and variations that took place in the historical process of the psycho-socio-cultural and religious factors which played crucial roles in the formation of the social gender concept were examined by taking the elements that affected these transformations and variations into consideration. Moreover, male and female images in the representations of god and goddess; degrading the status of female from creativeness to being just a bearer of baby as a result of the understanding of the secrecy of fertility; the issues of primacy and recency in the process of creation, which has concerned the minds of people throughout the history, and how monotheistic and polytheistic religions approach to the subject have been described. We have examined the religious statements in terms of the Judeo- Christian and Muslim traditions. In this framework, some interpretations of the verses of Koran concerning social and finally the interpretations of hadith, especially considered as one of the important religious texts by the Muslims, have been scrutinized. Key Words: Sex, Gender, Stereotypes, Androgyny, Religion.