Woman
A
woman is a
female human. The term
woman (irregular plural:
women) usually is used for an adult, with the term
girl being the usual term for a female child or adolescent. However, the term, woman, is also sometimes used to identify a female human, regardless of age, as in phrases such as "women's rights".
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Symbol of the planet Venus, also used to indicate the female gender among animals who reproduce sexually |
The
English term "Man" (from
Proto-Germanic mannaz "man, person") and words derived therefrom can designate any or even all of the human race regardless of their gender or age. This is indeed the oldest usage of "Man" in English. This derives from a Proto-Indo-European root *man-" meaning hand. A similar cognate is Old Norse "mund", hand. The distinctive and dexterous hands of humans, compared to other animals, are the basis of this term and the similarly derived term, "manual", by hand.
In
Old English the words
wer and
wyf (also
wæpman and
wifman) were what was used to refer to "a man" and "a woman" respectively, and "Man" was gender neutral. In
Middle English man displaced wer as term for "male human", whilst wyfman (which eventually evolved into woman) was retained for "female human". "Man" does continue to carry its original sense of "
Human" however, resulting in an
asymmetry sometimes criticized as sexist by those who fail to understand its root in describing the hand as characteristic of humans. [
1] (See also
Womyn.)
The symbol for the planet
Venus is the sign also used in biology for the female gender once a male gender exists in the animal species being described (males do not exist in early animal forms, where all reproduction is female generation of more females, exclusively): a stylized representation of the goddess Venus's hand
mirror or an abstract symbol for the goddess: a circle with a small equilateral cross underneath (
Unicode: ♀). The Venus symbol also represented
femininity, and in ancient alchemy stood for
copper. Alchemists constructed the symbol from a circle (representing
spirit) above an equilateral cross (representing
matter).
The
English language's original word for "woman" was
Old English wīf, akin to German
Weib; it later became the modern word "wife." The modern word "woman"
etymologically derives from
wīfmann, with the addition of
mann, "person", from Germanic
mannaz. This formation is peculiar to English. The equivalents for "Man" in Old English were
wer (a cognate of Latin
vir, "man") and
wǣpnedmann, literally "weaponed person". As previously mentioned, the term
Man continues to carry its original sense of "
Human", though this usage results in an asymmetry which is sometimes criticized as sexist when the root is unknown.
The word
girl originally meant "young person of either sex" in English; it was only around the beginning of the
16th century that it came to mean specifically a
female child. Nowadays
girl sometimes is used colloquially to refer to a young or unmarried woman. During the early
1970s feminists challenged such use, and today, using the word, girl, to refer to grown women in most social settings and the workplace (as in
office girl) typically is considered
inappropriate and denigrating in the
United States and
United Kingdom because it implies a view of women as infantile, having a parallel in the use of the term "boy" for black men to deny their adult status in racist communities. It is sometimes stated that the use remains commonplace in several other
English-speaking countries, without such implications, but research regarding that is lacking.
Conversely, in certain non-Western cultures which link family
honor with female
virginity, the word
girl is still used to refer to a never-married woman; in this sense it is used in a fashion roughly analogous to the obsolete English
maid or
maiden. Referring to an unmarried female as
woman may, in such a culture, imply that she is sexually experienced, which would be an insult to her family.
In some settings, the use of
girl to refer to an adult female is a vestigial practice (such as
girls' night out), even among some elderly women. In this sense,
girl may be considered to be the analogue to the British word
bloke for a man, although it again fails to meet the parallel status as an adult and the only true American English parallel to
girl is
boy, which clarifies assignment of lower status that many seem to deny. The basis of this might occur from the disproportionate evaluation of the effects of aging upon women versus men. Many regard non-parallel usages, such as
men and girls, as
sexist. A number of other
derogatory terms for women are also in common use.
There are various words used to refer to the quality of being a woman. The term "womanhood" merely means the state of being a woman, having passed the
menarche; "femininity" is used to refer to a set of supposedly typical female qualities associated with a certain attitude to
gender roles; "womanliness" is like "femininity", but is usually associated with a different view of gender roles; "femaleness" is a general term, but is often used as shorthand for "human femaleness"; "distaff" is an archaic adjective derived from women's conventional role as a spinner, now used only as a deliberate
archaism; "
muliebrity" is a "neologism" (derived from the Latin) meant to provide a female counterpart of "
virility", but used very loosely, sometimes to mean merely "womanhood", sometimes "femininity", and sometimes even as a collective term for women.
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Biological factors are not the sole determinants of whether persons can be considered, or consider themselves, women. Some women can have abnormal hormonal or chromosomal differences (such as
congenital adrenal hyperplasia, complete or partial
androgen insensitivity syndrome, or other
intersex conditions), and there are women who may be without, at least for an earlier part of their lives, typical female physiology (
trans,
transgendered or
transsexual women). (See
gender identity.)
In terms of
biology, the female
sex organs are involved in the reproductive system, whereas the
secondary sex characteristics are involved in nurturing children or, in some cultures, attracting a mate. The breast is an enlarged sweat gland and milk is a nutritious type of sweat, the most distinctive characteristic of Mammals. The reason that both men and women have breasts is that the rudimentary form of animals was female for millions of years. Males are a variation of that basic female form, occurring only after sexual reproduction began. A fetus may differentiate into one or the other gender in some species, because of temperature or other environmental factors, or by a specific broken chromosome in species such as humans. The penis is an enlarged clitoris, the testes descended ovaries, and even vestigial structures exist in male animals that would have been a uterus and a vagina if the gender were to be female. An imbalance of maternal hormonal levels and some chemicals (or drugs) may alter the secondary sexual characteristics of fetuses. Most women have the
karyotype 46,XX, but around one in a thousand will be 47,XXX, and one in 2500 will be
45,X.
Although fewer females than males are born (the ratio is around 1:1.05), due to a longer life expectancy there are only 81 men aged 60 or over for every 100 women of the same age, and among the oldest populations, there are only 53 men for every 100 women. Women have a lower death rate than men, and on average, live five years longer. This is due to a combination of factors:
genetics (redundant and varied
genes present on
sex chromosomes in women);
sociology (such as not being expected in most countries to perform
military service);
health-impacting choices (such as
suicide or the use of
cigarettes, and
alcohol); the presence of the female hormone
estrogen, which has a cardioprotective effect in premenopausal women; and the effect of high levels of
androgens in men. Out of the total human population, there are 101.3 men for every 100 women (source: 2001 World Almanac).
After the onset of
menarche, most women are able to become
pregnant and
bear children. The study of female reproduction and
reproductive organs is called
gynaecology. Women generally reach
menopause in their late 40s or early 50s, at which point their
ovaries cease producing
estrogen and they can no longer become pregnant.
To a large extent, women suffer from the same illnesses as men. However, there are some diseases that primarily affect women, such as
lupus. Also, there are some
sex-related illnesses that are found more frequently or exclusively in women, e.g.,
breast cancer,
cervical cancer, or
ovarian cancer. Women and men may have different symptoms of an illness and may also respond differently to medical treatment. This area of medical research is studied by
gender-based medicine.
 |
A Bangladeshi woman weaving. Textile work has historically been considered a female occupation in some cultures. |
Main article: Gender role
In many
prehistoric cultures, women assumed a particular cultural role. In
hunter-gatherer societies, women were generally the gatherers of plant foods, small animal foods, fish, and learned to use dairy products, while men hunted meat from large animals. Because of their intimate knowledge of plant life, most
anthropologists assert that it was women who led the
Neolithic Revolution and became history's first pioneers of
agriculture.
In more recent history, the gender roles of women have changed greatly. Traditional gender roles for
middle-class women typically involved domestic tasks emphasizing child care, and did not involve entering employment for wages. For poorer women, especially among the
working classes, this often remained an ideal, for economic necessity has long compelled them to seek employment outside the home, although the occupations traditionally open to working-class women were lower in prestige and pay than those open to men. Eventually, restricting women from wage labor came to be a mark of wealth and prestige in a family, while the presence of working women came to mark a household as being lower-class.
The women's movement is in part a struggle for the recognition of
equality of opportunity with men, and for
equal rights irrespective of
gender, even if special relations and conditions are willingly incurred under the form of partnership involved in marriage. The difficulties of obtaining this recognition are due to historical factors combined with the habits and customs history has produced. Through a combination of
economic changes and the efforts of the
feminist movement in recent decades women in most societies now have access to careers beyond the traditional one of "
homemaker". Despite these advances, modern women in Western society still face challenges in the workplace as well as with the topics of education, violence, health care, and motherhood to name a few.
These changes and struggles are among the foci of the
academic field of
women's studies.
Women's rights usually refers to
human rights which are or have been granted to adult men, but not to adult women in a particular society. In most historic societies, with several exceptions, women have been subjugated by
patriarchal infrastructures and denied many basic human rights. Although significant reforms have been made in some parts of the world to extend human rights to women and men equally, in many others women continue to be treated with the same legal standing as children or as chattel belonging to their fathers or husbands, or pressured to conform to strict gender roles which may go against their wishes. Although by number, women constitute a majority of the population worldwide, they wield disproportionately low political, sexual, and
socioeconomic power. Advocates for women's rights seek to correct these power imbalances by granting women the same rights and responsibilities as men.
Image:Weaving_profile.jpgImage:Minirock_%28Lack%29_Model_Dani_2.jpgImage:Woman_in_Tunisia.jpgImage:Edward_S._Curtis_Collection_People_008.jpgImage:Baby_got_Back.jpgImage:Bedouin_Beauty_NGM-v31-p271.jpgImage:Maiko_in_Gion.jpgImage:Australian_Woman%27s_Mirror.jpgImage:Deidre_Downs.jpgImage:Ethiopia_3.jpgImage:Tattoo-back.jpgImage:Dahomey-amazoner.jpgImage:Sonya_Kraus_Schalke_2004c.jpgImage:Mozambique_-_mask.jpgImage:Women_in_Egypt.jpgImage:Salvor-8-mars-2006-dubliners.jpgImage:Ana Srebrnič.jpgImage:PregnantWoman.jpgImage:Pregnancy 26 weeks.jpgImage:Waterhouse-Elaine.jpgImage:Human-woman.png*
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003 3rd edition) ISBN 0618254145
* McWhorter, John. 'The Uses of Ugliness',
The New Republic Online, January 31, 2002. Retrieved
May 11 2005 ["bitch" as an affectionate term]
* McWhorter, John.
Authentically Black: Essays for the Black Silent Majority (New York: Gotham, 2003) ISBN 1592400019 [casual use of "bitch" in ebonics]
*
FemBio – Notable Women International*
NewsOnWomen*
Women and Christianity: representations and practices*
Women health*
Women in Islam*
Women's History in America*
Celebration of Women Writerszh-yue:女人
