Talk:Woman

The introduction is overly focused on the biological meaning of women

Its strange to read an article on women and see "women have less body hair, wider hips and the SRY chromosome".

Setting aside the obvious trans and body image issues, why is this the introduction? The introduction should help introduce what is being talked about, not list random facts that are only half true.

Im not sure what could replace it, but it certainly shouldnt be this 219.90.169.129 (talk) 15:32, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

You said, "list random facts that are only half true" and yet _every_ woman has the SRY chromosome.-2600:1702:170:3B90:9A1:5CF9:944E:1AB5 (talk) 19:06, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

That isn't even half true. :) Newimpartial (talk) 20:34, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

As per WP:LEAD, as there is strong focus on sexual dimorphism in humans (specifically women) within the content of the article, it is the job of the lead to summarize the content of the article within the lead. Theheezy (talk) 16:53, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

And, a large portion of the sources about the topic of women talk about these biological and medical aspects. Crossroads ^-talk- 20:45, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

As the other comments point out, the lead section is meant to summarize the body of the article. As most of the article is written from a biological and medical perspective, rather than a social science perspective, the lead's focus on those aspects of women is perfectly appropriate. Rreagan007 (talk) 15:48, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

WP:NPOV and MOS:LEAD

According to The Washington Post in an article titled "Cambridge Dictionary updates definition of ‘woman’ to include trans women" on December 13, 2022: A Cambridge Dictionary spokeswoman told The Washington Post on Tuesday that its editors “made this addition to the entry for ‘woman’ in October”. The expanded definition of woman now includes: "an adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth." WaPo also quotes Sophie White, a spokeswoman with Cambridge University Press: “Our dictionaries are written for learners of English and are designed to help users understand English as it is currently used,” White said in a statement, noting that the dictionaries are compiled by analyzing more than 2 billion words. An analysis of this many words allows the Cambridge Dictionary “to see exactly how language is used,” White said.

This updated definition seems to further support concerns about whether the apparent disproportionate focus on biological characteristics in the lead is WP:DUE per MOS:LEAD. I had recently attempted to make a small correction to better reflect the overall article structure, but it was reverted [1]. My concern is this article has 15 content sections, and most do not appear to relate to the biological characteristics summarized in section 3, but the four-graf lead includes a large graf that appears focused on material from section 3, with a level of detail that seems unusual for a lead, and especially for such a broad and comprehensive article. I think a lead with a more balanced summary of the article would help readers have a better understanding of the contents. Thank you, Beccaynr (talk) 03:02, 15 December 2022 (UTC) (section heading edited and previous title incorporated into the comment) Beccaynr (talk) 02:41, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Support Kolya's reversion of your attempted change to the lead. Also, I don't see why the change in one dictionary's coverage is worth raising here, regardless how beneficial it might be (or even if it's the opposite). The number of reliable sources about the topic "Woman" surely must be in the hundreds of thousands; a change to one of them does not move the needle much. Mathglot (talk) 11:39, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

I will plan on developing a proposal for a more balanced lead, because my main concern is related to how this is a broad and general article, and it appears WP:UNDUE to have a detailed summary of one section in the lead of an article with 15 sections.

In the meantime, this article currently cites Mosby's Pocket Dictionary of Medicine, Nursing & Health Professions (2009) and Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary (2017) after the first sentence in the lead. For this broad and general article, WP:NPOV policy seems to support giving WP:DUE weight to more than two medical dictionaries.

For example, when Dictionary.com chose 'woman' as its word of the year for 2022, it noted "the word belongs to each and every woman – however they define themselves." (CNN, Dec. 13, 2022), and the Oxford English Dictionary begins its definition with "I. 1. a. An adult female human being. (The context may or may not have special reference to sex or to adult age: cf. man n.1 4 a, c, d.)". Also, in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of woman, "female" is listed as a synonym, and the definition of female includes gender identity.

From my perspective, the subject of this article appears to be broadly defined in a variety of reliable sources, so some refinement of the lead seems helpful according to policy and the MOS. Thank you, Beccaynr (talk) 15:58, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

You previously rejected using Merriam Webster's definion of gender. [2] Kolya Butternut (talk) 04:15, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi Kolya Butternut, that diff is to a different article's Talk page subsection that begins with a quote of my edit summary "Rm mis-cited dictionary definition; source cited does not state this; restore status quo pending further discussion on Talk re: dictionaries, WP:NPOV, etc", during a pending AfD, and then a Talk discussion follows where I object to removals of sourced content from the lead, not the Merriam Webster dictionary.

For this article, this Talk page includes:

• Crossroads: The proper comparator is how that dictionary defines 'woman' 04:27, 15 July 2022 [3] (referring to Merriam Webster's)
• Theheezy: Dictionaries can be secondary or tertiary sources. However even if they are serving as tertiary sources, their content highly agrees with consensus amongst secondary sources. This is especially so for reputable dictionaries. Furthermore, they also summarize how each word is used in everyday speech, i.e., the common usage and interpretation of a word. Thus I find it hard to argue that the consensus among secondary sources is somehow radically different from those given in reputable dictionaries. 04:55, 17 July 2022 [4]
• Mathglot: Twenty-one years and four thousand edits later, the first sentence has passed through many permutations, and now reads: "A woman is an adult female human", and as Crossroads pointed out, that does pretty much agree with dictionary definitions. 20:10, 18 July 2022 [5]
• Crossroads: dictionaries, especially scholarly and scientific dictionaries, are useful for establishing the quick and simple definition we need for a first sentence. 04:31, 19 July 2022 [6]

For this broad and comprehensive article, the use of broad and comprehensive dictionaries seems to have some support, both in past Talk page discussion and based on the nature of this article. Beccaynr (talk) 09:54, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Folks should read the discussion at a different article where you reject using dictionaries. [7] I don't think I can engage with your arguments until there is evidence of consistency. I suggest you start at that article by revisiting the talk page discussion about dictionaries. Kolya Butternut (talk) 14:15, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

From my view, that diff does not link to inconsistency, because I did not reject using dictionaries. Also, the female (gender) article is developing into a parent article for a topic that has been the subject of more than 40 years of academic and scientific research. But I do not think it is constructive for us to repeat ourselves about this ad hominem, so hopefully this discussion can focus on this article and its content and the appropriate sources for this topic. Thank you, Beccaynr (talk) 15:26, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Continued at your talk page: User_talk:Beccaynr#Warning:_Wikilawyering. Kolya Butternut (talk) 20:26, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

I too note the inconsistency in when a dictionary definition is argued to be of use. Additionally, dictionaries should not be cherry-picked, and academic/scientific dictionaries carry more weight.

The "female (gender)" draft was taken to AfD and escaped deletion via draftification, and those of us opposed to its existence as an article were told not to interfere to give you a chance to develop it. That it has any place on Wikipedia, let alone as a "parent article", remains to be established.

This edit was POV and I support its reversion. A large portion of the total sources on women are sources on biological and medical aspects, involving women's health and entire fields like obstetrics and gynecology. Additionally, social aspects cannot be divorced from biological aspects, as it is via those features in large part that someone lives "as female" as described in the dictionary you were pointing to at the beginning of this thread. That is why hormone therapy and other treatments to develop those features are considered necessary medical care for trans women. Crossroads ^-talk- 00:52, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

For the sake of clarification, the AfD closing statement on August 3, 2022 includes In general, anyone can edit the draft, but we'd politely request that the proponents of this article are given a disruption-free environment to craft the article - I was not the only proponent of the article, which was tagged as currently being created when it was sent to AfD [8], and I have not been the only editor. Beccaynr (talk) 03:35, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

Crossroads, if you have diffs of what you consider to be inconsistency with discussion about an article on another topic, and can explain how it seems relevant to my discussion of dictionaries here, that would be appreciated so I could more directly respond. Also, my goal with the edit to the lead in this article was balance per the MOS and WP:NPOV, and specifically for WP:DUE weight based on the contents of the article. I have also said I would plan on posting a proposal.

And according to the Cambridge Dictionary I pointed to at the beginning of this thread, the main definition of woman is:

A1 an adult female human being

an adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth

The Cambridge Dictionary first defines female as "female adjective (GENDER)" with the definition "belonging or relating to women", and then "female adjective (SEX)" with the definitions "B1 belonging or relating to the sex that can give birth to young or produce eggs" and "belonging or relating to a plant, or part of a plant, that produces flowers that will later develop into fruit" followed by other uses of the word.

This definition seems to generally reflect the sex and gender distinction, but I think we should focus our discussion on this article and specifically whether and how the lead could better reflect the contents. Thank you, Beccaynr (talk) 01:37, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

The quote of the definition of "woman" is actually two different definitions. The "gender" definition of "female" creates circularity with "woman", so the sex entry is relevant to define "living as female". Sex and gender being distinct concepts does not mean that the two are so disconnected or non-overlapping like that edit implied. WP:NPOV and WP:DUE are defined based on the body of sources on a topic, not the imperfect state of an article at a given point in time. Crossroads ^-talk- 03:07, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

The lead of MOS:LEAD includes a reference to WP:DUE: As in the body of the article itself, the emphasis given to material in the lead should roughly reflect its importance to the topic, according to reliable, published sources, and the MOS:INTRO section begins by stating, The lead section should briefly summarize the most important points covered in an article in such a way that it can stand on its own as a concise version of the article and includes Editors should avoid lengthy paragraphs and overly specific descriptions – greater detail is saved for the body of the article. From my view, the main issue is how WP:NPOV applies to the lead, as it relates to providing a brief summary of the article contents. Beccaynr (talk) 03:45, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

social aspects cannot be divorced from biological aspects - I disagree. Gender as a concept came out of the academic rejection of biological determinism, specifically in an effort to identify the aspects of living "as female" that can be divorced from biological aspects. From a logical standpoint, it is impossible to derive gender just by observing the biology of women, and vice versa. For example, you can't observe female biology and logically derive eyeliner. Nor can you observe eyeliner and logically derive the biology of women. Culture is associated with biology, but it's not the inevitable conclusion, and thus the only way to understand it is to recognize that it has many determinants. The void century (talk) 17:28, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

• fyi, there is an adjacent discussion at Talk:Gender#Lead sentence definition that includes a discussion of sources that may be of interest to editors of this article. Beccaynr (talk) 17:05, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

For editors who oppose changing the lead, what would be required for you to consider a change? I want to confirm that the BRD that seems to happen every few months with this lead isn't merely the confirmation bias of a few editors. Beccaynr brings up a valid point, which is that the lede sentence is currently based on two medical dictionaries. Is this really WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY? Beccaynr has said this article has 15 content sections, and most do not appear to relate to the biological characteristics. The void century (talk) 15:35, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

A quick scan of this article seems to show that none of the trans nonsense has made it into the article, and that is a good thing. The effort of trans ideologues to include trans women in the definition of women is contrary to what a majority of humanity believes. For thousands of years, a woman was considered to be a person with a female reproductive system, and twenty or thirty years of transgender ideology is not enough to change that. Trans women are men who wish to be women and nothing more. It wouldn't hurt, however, to have a paragraph on the controversy in the article. 24.38.185.65 (talk) 12:06, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

"Typically" women inherit XX chromosomes and are capable of pregnancy

Pinging @Crossroads, Sideswipe9th, and Newimpartial: all the editors who I'm aware have directly interacted with this issue. If you're joining us from WP:Conservatism, welcome. Please leave your cowboy hats, gumboots, and revolver pistols by the door.

@Cable10291: You left a message at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Conservatism inviting editors to "get involved in a discussion" about the sentence which currently reads Typically, women inherit a pair of X chromosomes, one from each parent, and are capable of pregnancy and giving birth from puberty until menopause. Since you did not (outside your edit summaries) actually begin such a discussion, I invite you to do so here and gain consensus for the change.

My view is that, for the sake of precision, "typically" is a necessary qualification here, as it is demonstrably the case that some women (including those assigned female at birth) do not solely inherit two X chromosomes, and some women (including those born with wombs) are not capable of pregnancy or menstruation. Furthermore, some humans who do typically inherit two X chromosomes are not women. In other words, intersex humans exist, infertile humans exist, transgender humans exist.

I consider all three of these facts to fall into WP:BLUESKY territory (and furthermore, that editors surprised by them may wish to do further reading before contributing to GenSex topics), but I did attempt to remedy the apparent lack of a source by citing an intentionally entry-level "Intersex 101"-type source, which was later removed. If desired I can probably find another which would be more satisfactory. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (💬 • 📝) 04:23, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Addendum: If the "typically" here really is likely to be challenged, I suspect the better remedy would be either an explanatory footnote, or an additional body paragraph explaining various common phenotypes beyond XX that frequently result in female sex assignment. I was hoping Wikipedia might have an easily linkable section somewhere which neatly lists all the possible X/Y-linked chromosomal abnormalities (these are listed in Template:Chromosomal abnormalities and a fairly similar list exists at Intersex#Prevalence), but barring that, a more general pointer at the Intersex topic area might be the next best thing. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (💬 • 📝) 04:42, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

I agree "typically" or some qualifier is neccessary here EvergreenFir (talk) 06:55, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

This may be a helpful citation here: link. Theheezy (talk) 15:51, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't see any benefit in changing this away from "typically". We also shouldn't go overboard with anything WP:UNDUE. Crossroads ^-talk- 22:16, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

I would have said that "typically" was unnecessary until further reading. Now I think it is required. See User:Theheezy citation above and also Here , Here Lukewarmbeer (talk) 12:13, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

The only change I'd suggest to that sentence is that "one from each parent" become "one from each genetic parent", as non-genetic parents exist (adoption, gamete donation), too. I'm not sure that this is an important enough point to emphasize in the opening sentences, though. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:28, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Woman at Lover's Bridge Tanjung Sepat (cropped).jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 12:52, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

This is the article's lead image, voted upon and improved. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:16, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Pronunciation

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Why is "women" pronounced like it is? 92.192.60.10 (talk) 13:22, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language for questions like this. Mathglot (talk) 20:16, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.