call ascribed status. As soon as a baby is born, or even earlier with modern technology, it is announced boy or a girl. In this way, the child is assigned a gender, and this will affect technically relationships with others for the rest of his or her life. In some societies, time is mostly spent with others of the same gender perhaps even through enforced separation from all but the closest relatives of the other sex. This idea may be reinforced by religious ideology, but even in societies like the US, Europe, and Australia where gender is supposed to be officially eliminated a a marker of difference, there are usually activities perhaps doing sports or going shopping where a strong preference for company of the gender is still quite evident. There are also ways in which individuals can manipulate the divisions, perhaps by cross-dressing, or these days by surgery, and there are some societies which clas sify people into more than two genders.