Radical 38 or radical woman () meaning "

woman A woman is an adult female human. Before adulthood, a female child or Adolescence, adolescent is referred to as a girl. Typically, women are of the female sex and inherit a pair of X chromosomes, one from each parent, and women with functi ...

" or "

female An organism's sex is female ( symbol: ♀) if it produces the ovum (egg cell), the type of gamete (sex cell) that fuses with the male gamete (sperm cell) during sexual reproduction. A female has larger gametes than a male. Females and ...

" is one of the 31 Kangxi radicals (214 radicals total) composed of three strokes. In the '' Kangxi Dictionary'', there are 681 characters (out of 49,030) to be found under this radical. is also the 56th indexing component in the '' Table of Indexing Chinese Character Components'' predominantly adopted by Simplified Chinese dictionaries published in

mainland China "Mainland China", also referred to as "the Chinese mainland", is a Geopolitics, geopolitical term defined as the territory under direct administration of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the aftermath of the Chinese Civil War. In addit ...

Evolution

File:女-oracle.svg, Oracle bone script character File:女-bronze.svg, Bronze script character File:女-bigseal.svg, Large seal script character File:女-seal.svg, Small seal script character

Derived characters

Controversies over sexism

Some feminists have claimed that many Chinese characters under radical woman are

pejorative A pejorative word, phrase, slur, or derogatory term is a word or grammatical form expressing a negative or disrespectful connotation, a low opinion, or a lack of respect toward someone or something. It is also used to express criticism, hosti ...

, (slave, literally a hand holding a woman), (demon), (JP: , envy), (Simp.: , rape, traitor), (dislike) for example, and learning and using them may unconsciously lead to misogyny. Some have even proposed a reform of these characters. 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 (, entertainment), (to play with, usually classified under radical 126 ), (greedy), (envy), (envy), (dislike), (flattery), (presumptuous), (demon), (slave), (prostitute), (whore), (, rape, traitor), (extramarital sex), (bitch), and (to visit prostitutes). He also proposed a reform of some characters, e.g. replace with a newly created Chinese character "" (: dog, usually associated with monsters or uncivilized actions; : behaviors; the proposed character therefore implies rape is a monstrous behavior), believing that the change would reduce rape cases. 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. In 2015, an exhibition in

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

entitled "姦: Cultural Codes of Gender Violence" () organized by 65 artists was canceled by the authorities. Still, the idea of this exhibition made its way through international media outlets. Tong Yujie (), 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?" A 2014 study done by Wang Yuping from Anhui University's School of Chinese Language and Literature analyzed all Chinese characters with the woman radical in a concise edition of '' Hanyu Da Cidian'' (). 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. Similar controversies also exist in "gendered" European languages which have divisions between masculine and feminine terms. This phenomenon is called linguistic sexism.

Sinogram

Alone the character is one of the Kyōiku kanji or Kanji taught in elementary school in

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. It is a first grade kanji.

Literature

* *

References

External links

Unihan Database - U+5973
{{Simplified Chinese radicals Kyōiku kanji 038 056 Terms for women