Word.ws English Dictionary

play the gender card

play the gender card verb: to assert that sexism is involved in a situation, especially in order to exploit sexist or antisexist attitudes.

Verb

play the gender card (third-person singular simple present plays the gender card, present participle playing the gender card, simple past and past participle played the gender card)

  1. (derogatory, idiomatic, often) To assert that sexism is involved in a situation, especially in order to exploit sexist or antisexist attitudes.
    • Oh, I don't wanna play the gender card card right now. You wanna play a card? Let's play the "let's not die" card.2003, 01:04:56 from the start, in Finding Nemo, spoken by Marlin (Albert Brooks)
    • What worries me is that she is accused of "playing the gender card" when citing the old boys’ club, while he is seen as unifying by citing civil rights confrontations.2008 January 8, Gloria Steinem, “Women Are Never Front-Runners”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

Forms of play the gender card

third-person singular presentplays the gender card
present participleplaying the gender card
past participleplayed the gender card
pastplayed the gender card

Questions about play the gender card

What does play the gender card mean?
Play the gender card means to assert that sexism is involved in a situation, especially in order to exploit sexist or antisexist attitudes.
What part of speech is play the gender card?
Play the gender card is a verb.
What is the past tense of play the gender card?
The past tense of play the gender card is played the gender card.

Words near play the gender card in the dictionary

  1. play the devil with
  2. play the dickens with
  3. play the field
  4. play the fool
  5. play the game
  6. play the gender card
  7. play the giddy goat
  8. play the giddy ox
  9. play the goat
  10. play the hand dealt
  11. play the hand one is dealt

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: play the gender card (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-play the gender card.ogg.

Cite this entry: “play the gender card.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/play_the_gender_card. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.