女
← 37 Radical 38 (U+2F25) 39 →
女 (U+5973) "woman, female"
Pronunciations
Pinyin:	nǚ
Bopomofo:	ㄋㄩˇ
Gwoyeu Romatzyh:	neu
Wade–Giles:	nü3
Cantonese Yale:	néuih
Jyutping:	neoi5
Pe̍h-ōe-jī:	lú
JapaneseKana:	ジョ jo (on'yomi) おんな onna (kun'yomi)
Sino-Korean:	녀 (여) nyeo
Names
Chinese name(s):	(Left) 女字旁 nǚzìpáng (Bottom) 女字底 nǚzìdǐ
Japanese name(s):	女偏/おんなへん onnahen
Hangul:	계집 gyejip
Stroke order animation

Radical 38 orradical woman (女部) meaning"woman" or"female" is one of the 31Kangxi radicals (214 radicals total) composed of threestrokes.

In theKangxi Dictionary, there are 681 characters (out of 49,030) to be found under thisradical.

女 is also the 56th indexing component in theTable of Indexing Chinese Character Components predominantly adopted bySimplified Chinese dictionaries published inmainland China.

• 
  Oracle bone script character
• 
  Bronze script character
• 
  Large seal script character
• 
  Small seal script character

Somefeminists have claimed that many Chinese characters under radical woman arepejorative,奴 (slave),妖 (demon),妒 (JP:妬, envy),姦 (Simp.:奸, rape, traitor),嫌 (dislike) for example, and learning and using them may unconsciously lead tomisogyny.^[1] Some have even proposed a reform of these characters.^[2]

In 2010, Ye Mantian (叶满天), a mainland Chinese male lawyer, posted an essay online in which he criticized 16 Chinese characters for their sexist implication. The 16 characters were娱 (娛, entertainment),耍 (to play with, usually classified underradical 126而),婪 (greedy),嫉 (envy),妒 (envy),嫌 (dislike),佞 (flattery),妄 (presumptuous),妖 (demon),奴 (slave),妓 (prostitute),娼 (whore),奸 (姦, rape, traitor),姘 (extramarital sex),婊 (bitch), and嫖 (to visit prostitutes). He also proposed a reform of some characters, e.g. replace奸 with a newly created Chinese character "犭行" (犭:dog, usually associated with monsters or uncivilized actions;行: behaviors; the proposed character therefore implies rape is a monstrous behavior), believing that the change would reducerape cases.^[3] Opponents argued that the new characters were historically unsound; that even if they were adopted, they would remain specious and would not effectively improve female's social status. They also pointed out that improvements in legal and social culture aspects were the actual remedy of sexism.^[3][4]

In 2015, an exhibition inBeijing entitled "姦: Cultural Codes of Gender Violence" (姦：性別暴力伤害的文化符号) organized by 65 artists was canceled by the authorities. Still, the idea of this exhibition made its way through international media outlets. Tong Yujie (佟玉洁), the exhibition's academic convener, questioned in her writing: "Why did one woman become three, and such a symbol of political and moral imagination and an object of enmity in traditional Chinese society and political theory?"^[5]

A 2014 study done by Wang Yuping fromAnhui University's School of Chinese Language and Literature analyzed all Chinese characters with the woman radical in a concise edition ofHanyu Da Cidian (汉语大词典简编). The result shows that among these characters, there are 56 with negative meaning, 70 with positive meaning, and 184 are neutral. Nonetheless, the author believed that some of these categories suggested discrimination in traditional Chinese culture.^[6]

Similar controversies also exist in "gendered" European languages which have divisions between masculine and feminine terms. This phenomenon is calledlinguistic sexism.

Alone the character is one of theKyōiku kanji or Kanji taught in elementary school inJapan.^[7] It is a first grade kanji.^[7]

• Fazzioli, Edoardo (1987).Chinese calligraphy : from pictograph to ideogram : the history of 214 essential Chinese/Japanese characters. calligraphy by Rebecca Hon Ko. New York:Abbeville Press.ISBN 0-89659-774-1.
• Lunde, Ken (Jan 5, 2009)."Appendix J: Japanese Character Sets"(PDF).CJKV Information Processing: Chinese, Japanese, Korean & Vietnamese Computing (Second ed.).Sebastopol, Calif.:O'Reilly Media.ISBN 978-0-596-51447-1.

Wikimedia Commons has media related toRadical 038.

• Unihan Database - U+5973

• Kyōiku kanji
• Kangxi radicals
• Simplified Chinese radicals
• Terms for women

• CS1 Chinese (Taiwan)-language sources (zh-tw)
• CS1 Chinese (China)-language sources (zh-cn)
• CS1 Chinese (Singapore)-language sources (zh-sg)
• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Articles containing Chinese-language text
• Articles containing Japanese-language text
• Commons category link is on Wikidata