Representing Gender in Ontologies: A Dispositional Perspective

Fumiaki Toyoshima (1) , Adrien Barton (1, 2, 3) , Paul Fabry (1) , Jean-François Ethier (1)

1 UdeS - Université de Sherbrooke
2 IRIT-MELODI - MEthodes et ingénierie des Langues, des Ontologies et du DIscours
3 CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Like biological sex, gender is a crucial determinant of health. Its representation nonetheless remains underdeveloped in many electronic medical records and health information standards. This paper explores an ontological characterization of gender in compliance with the OBO principles for ontology development and the BFO upper ontology. In particular, we deploy J. McKitrick's dispositional account of gender (identity). Our main proposal is that gender can be analyzed as a behavioral and "extrinsic" disposition, as distinct from the BFO category of disposition. We also briefly discuss the implications of our dispositional approach to gender for so-called "gender roles" and gender-related information entities in existing ontologies.

Mots clés: gender role; gender information entity; disposition; extrinsic disposition; role; realizable; Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry; Basic Formal Ontology (BFO)

Domaines: Philosophie

Fumiaki Toyoshima, Adrien Barton, Paul Fabry, Jean-François Ethier. Representing Gender in Ontologies: A Dispositional Perspective. 12th International Conference on Biomedical Ontologies (ICBO 2021), Sep 2021, Bozen-Bolzano, Italy. pp.1-12. ⟨hal-03512267⟩