Woman

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  A woman is an adult female human, and the word she answers to has been a thousand years in the making. In Old English, the word mann meant a person of either sex. The term for a female was wif or wifmann. After the Norman Conquest, the consonants in wifmann coalesced, drifting from wifmann to wimmann to wumman, until the modern spelling settled into woman. Meanwhile wif narrowed to mean only a married woman. The biology, the history, and the rights bound up in that word stretch far beyond spelling. Who were the earliest women known by name? Why do women outlive men by years? What did it take for a woman to vote, to write under her own name, or to join a university faculty? The answers run from the foetal cell to the orchestra pit.

• 2. The Female Body

  ›

  Two X chromosomes typically sit in the cells of female humans, one inherited from each parent. During early foetal development, all embryos have phenotypically female genitalia up until week 6 or 7. A female foetus differentiates because no functioning SRY gene is present to push the gonads toward testes. Sex differentiation in female humans proceeds independently of gonadal hormones. Because mitochondrial DNA passes only from the mother's ovum, genealogical researchers can trace maternal lineage far back in time.

  The ovaries produce female gametes called ova, while the fallopian tubes transport the egg cells toward the uterus. The uterus holds tissue to protect and nurture a developing foetus, and its cervix expels it. The accessory glands, Bartholin's and Skene's, help lubricate during intercourse. The vagina serves in both copulating and birthing. Externally, the vulva comprises the clitoris, labia majora, labia minora, and the vestibule, where the vaginal and urethral openings sit.

  Oestrogens, the primary female sex hormones, shape a female's body. They appear in both men and women, but run significantly higher in women of reproductive age. During puberty, oestrogens drive breast development and widen the hips. Testosterone works against them, inhibiting breast development while promoting muscle and facial hair. The mammary glands are hypothesised to have evolved from apocrine-like glands to produce milk, the most distinctive characteristic of mammals alongside live birth. The prominence of the human breast is not necessary for milk production. It is thought to result at least partly from sexual selection.

  Deeper in the body, the differences continue at the level of blood. Women carry a lower haematocrit than men, with a normal range of 36% to 48% against the male 41% to 50%. Their normal haemoglobin runs 12.0 to 15.5 g/dL, where men sit at 13.5 to 17.5. The cause is lower testosterone, which otherwise stimulates the kidney to produce erythropoietin. Women's hearts carry finer-grained muscle textures, differ in shape and surface area when controlling for body size and age, and age more slowly than men's.

• 3. Stages Of Life

  ›

  Around age 12 to 13, most girls reach menarche, the onset of menstruation. Chemical signals from the pituitary gland prompt the ovaries to secrete hormones that mature the body, raising height and weight, growing body hair, and developing the breasts. Menstruation itself is a monthly hormonal cycle that sheds the lining of the uterus, sending blood and tissue out through the vagina. Cycles may run irregular at first and usually settle by a woman's 20s. Most women carry on their daily activities throughout, though some face symptoms from uncomfortable to disabling, or are held back by strong social stigma.

  Pregnancy generally requires the fertilisation of a woman's egg cells by a man's sperm cells. Humans resemble other large mammals in usually giving birth to a single offspring, but they are unusual in being altricial, meaning the young are undeveloped at birth and depend on their parents or guardians to fully mature. Multiple births do happen, most commonly twins. The mother carries the foetus in the uterus, and the placenta exchanges nutrients and waste between mother and foetus.

  Usually between ages 49 and 52, a woman reaches menopause, when menstrual periods stop permanently and childbearing ends. Hot flashes, night sweats, and headaches are among its symptoms, which both lifestyle changes and medications can ease. That humans live a significant span past reproductive age is itself unusual for mammals. Many elderly women help care for grandchildren and other family members, and many biologists believe the extended human lifespan is evolutionarily driven by kin selection.

• 4. Sex, Intersex And Gender

  ›

  Girls are born slightly less often than boys, at a ratio of around 1:1.05. In 2015, the world held 1018 men for every 1000 women. Male children were historically preferred over female, which made exposure commonplace. Female infanticide is less acceptable today but still occurs.

  Intersex women are usually defined as those born with ambiguous genitalia, atypical chromosomes, or atypical gonads. Most individuals with ambiguous genitalia are assigned female at birth, and most intersex women are cisgender. Women with CAIS showed no psychological differences from non-intersex women, including in gender identity or orientation. By contrast, women with conditions such as 5alpha-RD-2 or 17beta-HSD-3 showed increased rates of gender transition to live as men. The practice of assigning binary female to intersex youth is often controversial.

  Femininity, also called womanliness or girlishness, is a set of attributes, behaviours, and roles generally associated with women and girls. People have held it to be socially constructed, biologically influenced, or somewhere on the spectrum between nature and nurture. Both men and women can exhibit feminine traits, so it stands distinct from the biological female sex. Most women are cisgender, their female sex assignment at birth matching their female gender identity. Some women are transgender, assigned male at birth, and may experience gender dysphoria, the distress from a discrepancy between gender identity and sex assigned at birth. Feminising hormone therapy is a major component of medical transition, prompting female secondary sex characteristics such as breasts, redistributed body fat, and a lower waist-hip ratio. Most women are heterosexual, and fewer than 5% of adults are primarily attracted to the same sex.

• 5. Living Longer, Living At Risk

  ›

  Worldwide, women live six to eight years longer than men, an advantage that begins at birth, with newborn girls more likely than boys to survive the first year. The gap is thought to come partly from biological advantages and partly from behaviour: on average women are less likely to smoke or drink, and so suffer fewer preventable premature deaths. Yet the pattern is not universal. Discrimination against women has lowered female life expectancy in some parts of Asia, so that men there outlive women. The World Health Organization notes that the extra years of life for women are not always lived in good health.

  Disease falls unevenly across the sexes. Women carry higher rates of osteoporosis, auto-immune diseases, Alzheimer's, and breast cancer. They carry lower rates of lung cancer, Parkinson's, chronic liver disease, hypertension, diabetes, and HIV/AIDS. Some diseases are female-specific, including endometriosis, PCOS, and gynecologic cancers such as uterine or cervical cancer. The medical practice dealing with female reproduction is called gynaecology, etymologically the science of women.

  Maternal mortality, as the WHO defines it, is the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy. Between 2000 and 2023 that rate fell by 40% worldwide. In 2023 around 260,000 women died from complications of pregnancy, delivery, or abortion. Over 90% of those deaths occurred in low-income or lower-middle-income countries, with sub-Saharan African and South Asian women accounting for 87%. Most were preventable, reducible through healthcare access, medications for preeclampsia and haemorrhage, and good sanitation during delivery.

  Reproductive rights remain contested ground. Drawing on data from 2010 to 2014, the WHO reports 56 million induced abortions each year, a quarter of all pregnancies, of which about 25 million were unsafe. In developed regions about 30 women die for every 100,000 unsafe abortions; that figure climbs to 220 in developing regions and 520 in sub-Saharan Africa. The WHO ties those deaths to restrictive laws, poor availability of services, high cost, stigma, and requirements such as mandatory waiting periods that delay care.

• 6. The First Women Named

  ›

  Neithhotep, who lived around 3200 BCE, was the wife of Narmer and the first queen of ancient Egypt, and stands among the earliest women whose names survive. Merneith followed around 3000 BCE as consort and regent during the first dynasty, and may have ruled Egypt in her own right. Peseshet, around 2600 BCE, worked as a physician. Puabi, also called Shubad and dated around 2600 BCE, was a queen of Ur whose tomb held many expensive artefacts.

  Kugbau, around 2500 BCE, was a taverness from Kish chosen by the Nippur priesthood to become hegemonic ruler of Sumer, and was later deified as Kubaba. Enheduanna, around 2285 BCE, served as high priestess of the temple of the Moon God in the city-state of Ur. She is possibly the first known poet and first named author of either gender, writing in the 23rd century BCE. Shibtu, around 1775 BCE, ruled as regent of the Syrian city-state of Mari during her husband's absence, holding extensive administrative powers as queen.

  The symbol used to represent the female sex, the glyph for the planet and Roman goddess Venus, known as Aphrodite in Greek, carries its own lineage. In ancient alchemy that same Venus symbol stood for copper and was associated with femininity. Other early figures reached into science and verse: Hypatia, born around 350 to 370 CE, was a mathematician and astronomer who edited the Almagest, while Ghosha composed hymns in the Rigveda around 1500 to 900 BCE.

• 7. Work, Schooling And The Faculty

  ›

  Married women's participation in the U.S. labour force climbed from 5.6 to 6% in 1900 to 23.8% in 1923, as factory work gave way to cleaner, more respectable office jobs that demanded more education. Traditionally, middle-class women handled domestic tasks centred on child care, while economic necessity pushed poorer women into employment outside the home, often into work that paid less than men's. Through the 1980s, institutions tried to equalise workplace conditions, yet inequalities at home still hampered women, who were generally held responsible for domestic labour and child care. The historian Schiebinger wrote that being a scientist and a wife and a mother is a burden in a society that expects women more often than men to put family ahead of career.

  In the United States in 2005 and 2006, women earned 62% of associate degrees, 58% of bachelor's degrees, 60% of master's degrees, and 50% of doctorates. By 2020-87% of the world's women were literate against 90% of men, though only 59% of women in sub-Saharan Africa could read. Despite this, women received only 30% of tertiary degrees in science and engineering and made up only 25% to 35% of researchers across most OECD countries.

  Research shows women study at prestigious universities at the same rate as men but are not given the same chance to join the faculty. The sociologist Harriet Zuckerman observed that the more prestigious an institute, the harder and more time-consuming it is for a woman to secure a faculty position there. Harvard University tenured its first woman in chemistry, Cynthia Friend, in 1989, and its first woman in physics, Melissa Franklin, in 1992. In 1992 women earned 9% of the PhDs awarded in engineering, but only one percent of those women became professors. By 1995-11% of professors in science and engineering were women, and only 311 deans of engineering schools were women, less than 1% of the total.

• 8. Voice And Vote

  ›

  In districts of Friesland, in the Netherlands, women began voting as early as 1689, a striking outlier in a long and uneven timeline of suffrage. At the other end, women in Kuwait gained the right to vote in 2005, and women in Saudi Arabia in 2015. The organisations that fought for the vote were numerous, from Switzerland's Association internationale des femmes, formed in 1868, to Liechtenstein's Komitee fur das Frauenstimmrecht, founded in 1969. As of January 2019, women held just 24.3% of seats in national assemblies worldwide. As of 2025, Vatican City allows women to vote only in a limited lay capacity.

  The earliest author known by name was the Akkadian woman Enheduanna. The first recorded female Chinese poet was Duchess Mu of Xu, in the 7th century BCE. The Tale of Genji, sometimes called the first novel, was written by the Japanese author Murasaki Shikibu in the 11th century CE. Success in a male-dominated world could be so difficult that women adopted male pen names, among them George Sand, George Eliot, and the Bell siblings Currer, Ellis, and Acton. The practice carried forward to Andre Norton, James Tiptree Jr, and the deliberately unisex names of J.K. Rowling and Harper Lee.

  Music tells a parallel story of presence without authority. Women fill the ranks of popular and classical singers and a large share of songwriters, yet few work as record producers, rock critics, or rock instrumentalists. A 2015 article found that 84% of the concerto soloists with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra were men, and in 2012 women made up just 6% of the Vienna Philharmonic. In the Concise Oxford History of Music, Clara Schumann is one of the only female composers mentioned. The music writer Jessica Duchen argued that women musicians are too often judged for their appearances rather than their talent, and face pressure to look sexy onstage and in photos, a measure that still shadows the performers who reach the top.