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A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, for instance, refers to the semantically based "covert" gender (e.g. male and female, not masculine and feminine) of English nouns, as opposed to the "overt" gender of some English pronouns; this yields nine gender classes: male, female, dual, common, collective, higher male animal, higher female ...
The human brain. Differences in male and female brain size are relative to body size. [82] Early research into the differences between male and female brains showed that male brains are, on average, larger than female brains. This research was frequently cited to support the assertion that women are less intelligent than men.
The word woman can be used generally, to mean any female human, or specifically, to mean an adult female human as contrasted with girl. The word girl originally meant "young person of either sex" in English; [16] it was only around the beginning of the 16th century that it came to mean specifically a female child. [17]
The ideas of differences between the male and female brains have circulated since the time of Ancient Greek philosophers around 850 BC. In 1854, German anatomist Emil Huschke discovered a size difference in the frontal lobe, where male frontal lobes are 1% larger than those of females. [6]
For several centuries, using the word female as a noun was considered more respectful than calling her a woman or a lady and was preferred for that reason; [9] however, by 1895, [7] [10] the linguistic fashion had changed, and female was often considered disparaging, usually on the grounds that it grouped humans with other animals.
Femininity (also called womanliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with women and girls. Femininity can be understood as socially constructed, [1] [2] and there is also some evidence that some behaviors considered feminine are influenced by both cultural factors and biological factors.
Women and men have been surveyed by Gallup each year concerning workplace topics. When questioned about preferences of a female boss or a male boss, women chose a preference for a male boss 39% of the time, compared to 26% of men displaying preference for a male boss. Only 27% of women would prefer a boss of the same gender. [49]
In the XY sex-determination system, the female-provided ovum contributes an X chromosome and the male-provided sperm contributes either an X chromosome or a Y chromosome, resulting in female (XX) or male (XY) offspring, respectively. Hormone levels in the male parent affect the sex ratio of sperm in humans. [25]