It's curious how the current mainstream narrative in most of the English-speaking world is that "sex" and "gender" are somehow two different things (perhaps related, but still not absolutely identical synonyms). It's curious because this is a relatively new thing.
The original reason why many people in many countries started to use the word "gender" when talking about people is because the word "sex" is a bit embarrassing, and has so many different meanings, many of which are not very appropriate to speak about in formal settings. "Sex" is very commonly used to talk about sexual activities and anything related to sexual arousal. "Sex" is also sometimes used more informally to refer to someone's genitals. Thus it's perhaps a bit embarrassing to talk about a person's "sex", and especially a child's "sex".
Thus the word "gender" started becoming popular as a nicer-sounding and less-embarrassing synonym. And, indeed, it was originally a 100% synonym. There was no meaning or connotation that it was referring to something other than just a person's biological sex. It was just a more prudish synonym, so you wouldn't need to use that slightly embarrassing original word.
However, the more that a "sexual liberation" movement and mentality has permeated western society, the more it transmogrified into what can be classified as "social justice" ideology, the more those two words started to be given ever-differing meanings. Now "sex" and "gender" are different things, somehow, because they say they are. No longer are they synonyms. The feminist social justice academics and advocates kind of "hijacked" that word, "gender", and applied their own theories to it and forced a different meaning into it. So successfully that it has become a mainstream fact in many places.
But ok, let's just accept for a moment, for the sake of argument, that they are different things. That "sex" refers to a person's biological sex, and "gender" refers to a more nebulous concept of what the person thinks and feels, and how that person behaves, and what that person's "gender role" is in society. In other words, let's just grant that "sex" refers to "male" and "female" (in the biological sense) and "gender" refers to "man" and "woman" (in the behavioral and social sense).
Are either of these things a "social construct"? Because the current feminist social justice doctrine, right from the highest echelons of feminist academia, is that they are, both of them.
A "social construct" refers to something we, as a society, just invented, came up with, not something that exists on its own independent of our actions and thinking, or something that is like it is by necessity, because there isn't really any other way for it to be. For example, traffic laws are a "social construct" in this sense, because they are 100% something we came up with and conjured, and don't exist on their own. Traffic laws aren't like they are by necessity, and could be different. The social rules of good manners and politeness, how to behave politely with other people, are a "social construct" because we invented them.
Rather obviously biological sex is most definitely 100% not a "social construct". It's determined by your chromosomes and other physical body characteristics. It's not something that we just invented and came up with. You can't choose your sex any more than you can choose your blood type. A man "identifying as a woman" is as ridiculous as someone with blood type A- "identifying as someone with blood type B+". You can say all day long that your blood type is B+, but that doesn't make it so: It's still A-. You saying so doesn't change physical reality. It doesn't make molecules reorganize in your body so that magically you change blood type.
And, in the same way, a man saying that he "identifies as a woman" doesn't make him a woman. He can repeat it all he likes, and he can force others to accept that claim via coercion and physical violence, but that still doesn't make him a woman. Forcing other people at gunpoint to play along doesn't change physical reality.
But how about "gender"? Did society just invent gender-specific behavior, gender roles, how a typical man behaves and how a typical woman behaves on average? Are we really just blank slates, and we have just been indoctrinated by society to think and behave in certain ways in this regard? Are these stereotypical thoughts and behaviors just completely arbitrary, and they could just as well be some other way, just like with traffic laws and rules of politeness?
If that were the case, then we would see much richer variety in gender roles in the world, especially when examining historic cultures, especially those that had been completely isolated from each other for very long periods of time. Surely when we look at, for example, native societies in the northern American continent before Europeans arrived, and compare them to, say, Chinese societies, or African societies, or Australian aboriginal societies, or European societies, or Japanese societies... surely there was a huge variety of "gender roles", with very arbitrary made-up rules about who behaves how and thinks what?
Maybe in some societies it was the females who were dominant, went hunting, went to war, and the worst of whom routinely raped men and had multiple husbands? Maybe in other societies there was little to no difference in gender roles, and males and females behaved pretty much identically and there was no discernible difference? Maybe in yet other societies the gender roles were a lot more exotic, like nothing we could even imagine today?
Yet, that's not the case. You can look at pretty much any society from any point in history, no matter how isolated from the rest of the world and for how long, and pretty much the exact same pattern repeats: Men are the ones who are the most dominant, men do the hard work, men for the most part go hunting and to war, men protect the villages and cities, men are the ones who mostly bring food to the table. Likewise women are the ones watching the house and raising the children, doing house chores, and so on and so forth. It's doubtful you will find even a single example of a society where some women routinely raped men, or a society where some men did not routinely rape women. (I'm not saying this is a good thing. I'm just stating facts here. I'm not trying to paint a pretty picture.)
Given that pretty much in every single human society that has ever existed, no matter how little influence it may have gotten from other societies (thanks to centuries and millenia-long geographical isolation), gender roles have always been almost identical, it's pretty safe to say that not even gender is a "social construct". It may be partially so, to some extents, in the finer details, but for the most part the physical characteristics and psychology of the average individual results in the stereotypical average gender roles that have always existed in all societies.
Of course there can be a lot of variety between individual people in how they think, what they like and don't like, and how they behave, with some women being extremely feminine and others being such tomboys that they behave more masculine than the average man, and similarly with men, but differences in individual behavior does not mean that these behaviors are a "social construct". It's no different than, for example, hair color: There are myriads of hair different colors, with individual people having a wide variety of tones, but that doesn't mean that hair color is somehow a "social construct". It simply means there's variation. Variation does not mean it was invented, something we came up with.
What matters, however, when it comes to natural instinctive gender roles, is how the average majority behaves and thinks. Some may not conform to this average and may be extreme outliers, but that doesn't make it a "social construct". It simply means there's variety in personal characteristics.
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