The basic, most important quality that makes something what it is. It can also mean a concentrated liquid that contains the flavor or smell of something.
From Latin *essentia* 'being, essence', from *esse* 'to be'. Philosophers used it to name the core 'what-it-is-ness' of things.
Essence is like the 'DNA of meaning'—what you’d keep if you stripped everything extra away. When people say 'the essence of friendship' or 'the essence of the problem', they’re hunting for that inner core. Even vanilla essence in baking is the same idea: the flavor without the whole bean.
Talk of the 'essence' of men or women has been used in essentialist arguments to justify gender roles, claiming fixed, innate traits such as nurturing for women or rationality for men. These claims have historically supported legal and social limits on education, work, and political rights.
Avoid framing gender or social roles as having a single unchanging 'essence'; instead, describe specific traits or patterns as shaped by culture, context, and individual variation.
["core aspect","central feature","fundamental quality"]
When encountering claims about the 'essence' of women or men, critically examine their historical use to exclude women from public life and highlight research that documents diversity within gender groups.
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