Gender Issues

Contemporary substance abuse prevention and treatment strategies represent the outcome of decades of research and clinical experience on how to best intervene in this critical social problem. The information accumulated over this time frame has pointed to several factors that must be taken into account, including the sex or gender of affected individuals. While sex is considered a biological construct used to classify individuals as "male" or "female" based on reproductive organs assigned by chromosomes, gender is a psychosocial construct used to classify individuals based on self-representations as "male" or "female." To maintain consistency with the use of the term gender in most of the research in this area, this entry uses the term gender to describe the assignment of male and female labels to ...