[image] The symbol for the planet Venus is the sign also known in biology for the female sex: a stylized representation of the goddess Venus's hand Mirror: a circle with a small 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 a cross (representing Matter).
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 attracting a mate. Most non-transsexual women have the Karyotype 46,XX, but around one in a thousand will be 47,XXX and one in 2500 will be 45,X.
[image] [image] Although fewer females than males are born (the ratio is around 1:1.05), women are more common in the adult population (about a 1.04:1 ratio). Women have a lower death rate than men, even in the Uterus, living on average five years longer 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 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.
In general, women suffer from the same illnesses as men; however there are some sex-related illnesses that are found more commonly or exclusively in women.
Some early legal systems that are the antecedents of modern systems formalized female dependency.
From Prehistory, women, like men, have assumed a particular cultural role. In Hunter-gatherer societies, women have almost always been the gatherers of plant foods, while men have hunted meat. Because of their intimate knowledge of plant life, most anthropologists argue 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 sex, 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, however, women in most societies now have access to careers beyond the traditional one of "Homemaker".
These changes are among the foci of the academic field of Women's studies.
The word girl originally meant "young person of either sex"; it was only around the beginning of the 16th century that it came to mean specifically a female Child. Nowadays girl is also often used colloquially to refer to a young or unmarried woman. Since the early 1970s, feminists have challenged such usage, and today, using the word in the workplace (as in office girl) is typically considered inappropriate in the United States and United Kingdom because it implies a view of women as infantile. The use remains commonplace in several other English-speaking countries.
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 can, in such a culture, imply that she is sexually experienced, which would be an insult to her family.
In more informal settings, the use of girl to refer to an adult female is also common practice in certain usage (such as girls' night out), even among elderly women. In this sense, girl may be considered to be the analogue to the British word bloke for a man. Some regard non-parallel usages, such as men and girls, as offensive.
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; "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 rôles; "femaleness" is a general term, but is often used as shorthand for "human femaleness"; "distaff" is an archaic adjective derived from women's conventional rôle as a spinner, now used only as a deliberate Archaism; "Muliebrity" is a neologism 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.
Authors often create new euphemisms or other terms to refer to women, an example being the use of the word burger on the American Television sitcom The Cosby Show to refer to an attractive female.