Women make up practically half of the entire population of the Earth; they are responsible for bringing life into the world, and face a range of different issues and responsibilities each day that are unique to them. The term woman is usually reserved 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”.

Womanhood

Womanhood is the period in a female’s life after she has transitioned from girlhood, at least physically, having passed the age of menarche. Many cultures have rites of passage to symbolize a woman’s coming of age, such as confirmation in some branches of Christianity, bat mitzvah in Judaism, or even just the custom of a special celebration for a certain birthday (generally between 12 and 21), like the Quinceañera of Latin America. The word woman can be used generally, to mean any female human, or specifically, to mean an adult female human as contrasted with girl.

There are various different 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.

Women and Prehistoric Stereotypes

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. In more recent history, the gender roles of women have changed greatly. Traditionally, middle-class women were typically involved in domestic tasks emphasizing child care. For poorer women, especially working class women, although this often remained an ideal, economic necessity compelled them to seek employment outside the home. The occupations that were available to them were, however, lower in pay than those available to men.

As changes in the labor market for women came about, availability of employment changed from only “dirty”, long houred factory jobs to “cleaner“, more respectable office jobs where more education was demanded, women’s participation in the U.S. labor force rose from 6% in 1900 to 23% in 1923. These shifts in the labor force led to changes in the attitudes of women at work, allowing for the revolution which resulted in women becoming career and education oriented.

The Female role within today’s society

Movements advocate equality of opportunity for both sexes and equal rights irrespective of gender. 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 far beyond that of the more prehistoric and traditional ‘homemaker’. Now more than ever, women are working in every single working environment available to them, and more men are taking on the ‘homemaker’ role as women work, and they remain home and take care of children. However, many observers, including feminist groups, maintain that women in industry and commerce face glass ceilings.

Feminism

Feminism is a political, cultural, and economic movement aimed at establishing equal rights and legal protection for women. Feminism includes sociological theories and philosophies concerned with issues of gender difference. It is also a movement that campaigns for women’s rights and interests. Nancy Cott defines feminism as the belief in the importance of gender equality, invalidating the idea of gender hierarchy as a socially constructed concept.

According to Maggie Humm and Rebecca Walker, the history of feminism can be divided into three waves. The first wave transpired in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the second occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, and the third extends from the 1990s to the present. Feminist theory emerged from these feminist movements. It is manifest in a variety of disciplines such as feminist geography, feminist history, and feminist literary criticism.

Feminism has changed traditional perspectives on a wide range of areas in human life, from culture to law. Feminist activists have campaigned for women’s legal rights— such as rights of contract, property rights, and voting rights—while also promoting women’s rights to bodily integrity and autonomy, abortion rights, and reproductive rights. They have struggled to protect women and girls from domestic violence, sexual harassment, and rape. On economic matters, feminists have advocated for workplace rights, including maternity leave and equal pay, and against other forms of gender-specific discrimination against women. Although the terms feminism and feminist did not gain widespread use until the 1970s, they were already being used in public parlance much earlier; for instance, Katharine Hepburn speaks of the “feminist movement” in the 1942 film Woman of the Year.

Women and Female symbols

The symbol for the planet Venus is the sign also used in biology for the female sex. It is 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).