["Social Science Quarterly, Volume 102, Issue 4, Page 1866-1881, July 2021. ", "\nAbstract\n\nObjective\nMany studies exist about people's views of gender in a wide variety of fields. However, participants are not typically asked what they think gender means; rather, gender is presumed to have a taken‐as‐shared meaning.\n\n\nMethods\nAs part of a larger study conducted in Australia and Canada about the general public's views of gender and mathematics, we investigated participants’ definitions of the term gender. We considered overall trends and trends by demographic group (country, gender, age, and education level).\n\n\nResults\nMost commonly, gender was defined as a person's feelings or self‐identification. Participants also frequently solely used the terms male and female or discussed biological features. However, response patterns varied widely by demographic group.\n\n\nConclusion\nDue to these diverse and sometimes contradictory definitions, we argue that researchers cannot assume that participants have common understanding of the term gender. We conclude by providing suggestions for how gender‐focused research can be done in more transparent ways.\n\n"]