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".

Etymology

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 those of 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).

Terminology

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.

Biology and gender

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 sex were 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.

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.)

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. This generally requires internal fertilization of her eggs with the sperm of a man, though the surgical implantation of an existing embryo is also possible (see reproductive technology). 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.

Culture and gender roles

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.

References

Roget’s II: The New Thesaurus, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003 3rd edition) ISBN 0-618-25414-5
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 1-59240-001-9 [casual use of "bitch" in ebonics]

External links