Female
- For other uses, see Female (disambiguation).Missing image
Female.pngFemale symbol
Female is the sex of an organism, or a part of an organism, which produces egg cells. The "egg cell" is defined as the larger gamete in a heterogamous reproduction system, while the smaller gamete is produced by the male. A female individual cannot usually reproduce without sexual intercourse with a male, although some exceptions exist.
There is no single genetic mechanism behind sex differences in different species, and the existence of two sexes in one species seems to have evolved multiple times independently. What actually differentiates a female from a male is not always apparent, and in some cases is more a question of definition than anything else. 'Female' and 'male' designate reproductive structures in plants, so the concept is not just limited to animals.
A common symbol used to represent the female gender is ♀ (Unicode: U+2640), a circle with a small cross underneath. This symbol also represents the planet Venus and may be seen as a stylized representation of the goddess Venus' hand mirror.