Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Female (gender)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was draftify to Draft:Female (gender). This AfD was closed by a panel of two administrators: Valereee and Scottywong.

The most compelling arguments on both sides centered around whether or not this represented a POV fork. No one seriously questioned the notability of the female gender, therefore the main question here is organizational: do we cover this topic in a standalone article on the female gender, or do we cover this topic within the many other related articles on sex and gender? Policy-based arguments were made cogently on both sides. In short, many delete voters complained that activists created this article as a safe haven for material that is otherwise unwelcome or objectionable in other articles on sex and gender. Many keep voters rebutted that this article needs to exist because there is a wealth of reliably sourced information out there that isn't being allowed in articles like Female, Woman, or Girl because those articles have been tightly scoped (by activists on the other side) to focus on the female gender primarily from the perspective of biological females. It's difficult to choose a winner between these two arguments, partially because the article hasn't been given an adequate chance to be developed and show what kind of sourced content could actually be included.

The arguments about the article not being developed enough were less compelling, especially considering that the article was nominated for deletion less than three hours after it was created. Unless there is evidence an article cannot be developed, this is not a valid reason to delete. Arguments about the article having fixable problems such as the parent article being too short to justify a split, article containing a misused source, or containing non-neutral content are a reason to fix, not to delete.

While there were strictly more bolded !votes to delete, we did not find the policy-based rationales to delete to be significantly more or less compelling than the policy-based rationales to keep. With that in mind, we considered a No Consensus close. But, looking more closely at the !votes on both sides, we found that a large percentage of voters either directly stated or implied that draftifying the article would be acceptable or even preferable, with the reasoning that the article needed more time for development before one could accurately judge whether or not this article structure works. Looking more deeply than the bolded !votes and reading more deeply into the intention of each voter, we found that there was a sufficient level of consensus that draftifying the article was an acceptable alternative.

We recognize that the closure of this AfD could have reasonably gone in a few different directions. Our primary concern here was what was best for the project, and, assuming this doesn’t end up at DRV, both of us believe that a Draftify close, rather than the safer “No Consensus”, is the one that is best for the project and least likely to cause continuing disruption. Considering the controversial nature of the topic, minimizing disruption necessarily needs to be a high priority.

Draftifying will allow the creators to develop their vision in draft space without another AfD being opened before they have that vision developed. If and when they do develop their vision to that point and move to article space, if there is another AfD, it should at least have removed any concerns on either side about lack of development, which was mentioned by multiple editors on both sides of the debate.

To that end, we'd like to ask everyone to adhere to the following terms while the article is in the Draft namespace:

1. In general, anyone can edit the draft, but we'd politely request that the proponents of this article are given a disruption-free environment to craft the article. If you have disagreements about the content or the existence of the article, we'd ask that you wait to act upon those disagreements until the article has been moved back into mainspace. Additionally, the draft generally shouldn't be nominated for deletion again while it remains in draft space.
2. During the time that the article is in draft space, we'd ask that Female (gender) remains a redirect to Gender. Please don't change the target of this redirect unless there is a clear consensus to do so, and please don't attempt to start a new article over the redirect.
3. When there is consensus among contributors that the draft is ready, it should be moved back into mainspace over the redirect (AfC review is not necessary). The draft does not need to be perfect or complete before it can be moved into mainspace. It simply needs to adequately demonstrate the authors' collective vision for the article, its structure, and the kind of content it will contain. If there is a plan to move/merge content from existing articles into this article, that content should be added to the draft but should not be removed from existing articles until the draft is published. If there is disagreement about moving/merging content, consensus discussions will eventually need to take place. Once the draft is moved back into mainspace, if an editor still believes that it should be deleted, they are free to start another AfD to discuss it further.
4. We ask that these restrictions remain in place until the draft is moved back into mainspace, or until a reasonable amount of time has elapsed (at least a month or two, but perhaps a bit longer if earnest progress continues to be made on the draft).

—⁠ScottyWong⁠— 13:37, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Valereee (talk) 14:01, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Female (gender)

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Female (gender) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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I redirected to Female but was reverted. Seems like a WP:CFORK which is not needed and is better covered in "Female" or in Gender which is where Male gender redirects. Bruxton (talk) 00:39, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

• note to would-be closers: panel closure requested at WP:AN and WP:CR. Crossroads ^-talk- 04:31, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Sexuality and gender-related deletion discussions. Bruxton (talk) 00:43, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
• Keep This nomination is too soon. The creation of Female (gender) is the result of a discussion at Talk:Female#Recent change to lead sentence as a bold WP:CONSPLIT. Also about 8 minutes before this AFD nomination I added the in creation template to the article, which suggests against doing this while an article is being created. Sideswipe9th (talk) 00:46, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  If that's not acceptable, then moving it to the draft namespace seems like the obvious alternative while the article is created. Sideswipe9th (talk) 00:48, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  It is a WP:REDUNDANTFORK in my opinion, prior to my redirect of the stub, another editor came to your the article starter's talk page to also suggest a redirect to the target article: Gender. Bruxton (talk) 00:50, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  I think you might be confusing me with another editor? I don't seem to have such a discussion on my talk page. Sideswipe9th (talk) 00:53, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Yes that was me. I reverted both of those because both reviewers had obviously not read the discussions linked in the talk page. The void century (talk) 00:57, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  If you had read the prior discussions linked on Talk:Female (gender), you would see that editors with widely diverging views agree that the article is not redundant and would be best covered in a separate article. Newimpartial (talk) 00:53, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  I see no reason the needed article would be faster or better in Draft space. Let's not do that unless the AfD closes that way. Newimpartial (talk) 00:51, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Female is a biology article, while Gender is about gender in general, not specifically about Female (gender). Neither of those pages really cover the material of Female (gender) as its own topic. The void century (talk) 00:54, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Unadulterated circular reasoning. We already know that Female and Gender are not the same articles as Female (gender) – which is what "Female (gender) as its own topic" equates to. That does not mean it needs to exist as a separate article, since "the material of" this subset topic can and so far has fit within these and other articles (e.g. Gender identity).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:52, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Speedy Keep Keep or draftify. Updating my vote: I agree that drafting might be more productive at this point, but the topic still deserves it's own article, so keep is my main vote. — Preceding unsigned comment added by The void century (talk • contribs) 19:25, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

• Please allow editors to create this article in good faith as we've already had extensive debate on this issue. This feels like WP:STONEWALL, ignoring literal years of discussion leading to the creation of this page. The void century (talk) 00:50, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
• @Bruxton this AfD should be rescinded, as per Wikipedia:Introduction to deletion processNominators for deletion should demonstrate a reasonable level of competence. This means articles, categories or templates should not be nominated in a routine fashion, nor because one feels too lazy to check for sources, or if the content is still being built or improved. The void century (talk) 01:16, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  if the content is still being built or improved - precisely that. The bloody creation template was on the article when Bruxtom made the (inappropriate) filing. Newimpartial (talk) 01:20, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  @Newimpartial: You do not have to template my talk page. This is part of the normal NPP process and it is not personal. I am only one editor, and if my judgement here was incorrect we will soon hear from other uninvolved editors. Bruxton (talk) 01:27, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Look, I templated an ArbCom member today when they made an edit relating to a GENSEX dispute and I couldn't tell whether or not they were formally DSAWARE in that area. I also template editors newly involved with GENSEX issues whether or not I agree with their POV. It was, indeed, not personal but it is a formal part of how we keep editing within this topic area from becoming, ummm, overly aleatory.

  My concern with your nom is that, at the time you placed it, the creation template was on the page and the discussions that spawned it were linked on Talk. All of which you apparently ignored as you filed the nomination - not, errr, the best practice, innit? Newimpartial (talk) 01:31, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

• Delete A content split requires there to be content which can be split. As is, Female is remarkably short for the subject matter. I don't see how dividing it into two pages is going to improve the situation. Further, the most content that there was to split out was the mere definition of the female gender. Until several paragraphs can be dedicated to it, it should remain part of the Female article, otherwise it will become a WP:POVFORK. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 03:07, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Ummm, Captain, a lot of the relevant content is at Woman, Girl and Sex and gender distinction. There isn't exactly a shortage of high-quality sourcing on the topic.

  Also, I don't think WP:POVFORK is a concern, since the argument that had been made by the OWNers at Female is that the scope of the topic ought to be about biology. It was never about POV (at least avowedly) or a lack of material, either. Even your own recent edit to Woman had a "don't get your chocolate in my peanut butter" vibe IMO. Newimpartial (talk) 03:29, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  @CaptainEek Expanding on Female (gender) within female could result in Template:Human-centric. Though it's not a steadfast rule, biology articles generally shouldn't have a bias towards humans. This article seems to be within the confines of WP:WHENSPLIT, as the main focus of Female is very obviously biological sex. The void century (talk) 03:37, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

• Delete. This is indeed a WP:POVFORK, being made to undercut and sidestep the fact that there is a long history of the vast majority of experienced editors at Talk:Female and Talk:Woman disagreeing with efforts to make those articles WP:UNDUE via maximizing gender and minimizing sex. Check the most recent discussions at those pages to see what prompted this. They wanted to de-wikilink female at woman so it didn't imply womanhood had anything to do with biology, and then they tried to make female half about gender in its lead despite the fact it mentioned gender already. Even now, we see complaining above about the existing consensus as being WP:OWN, which of course rather applies to this fork article which was obviously made to escape consensuses a few didn't like. This is pure redundancy and pushes the POV that experiencing life as a woman and as a female human can be reduced to just gender identity, a psychological state, based on a single new Merriam-Webster entry. WP:NOTDICTIONARY is relevant. All we need is brief material at female that the term sometimes refers to gender, but it's mostly about sex as it is about all species, not just humans, and they don't have gender. Other gender-related material belongs at woman. Crossroads ^-talk- 06:33, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  • They wanted to de-wikilink female at woman so it didn't imply womanhood had anything to do with biology This wasn't the goal of delinking and you know it. The goal was to create WP:BALANCE between gender and sex.
  • maximizing gender and minimizing sex. That's not the goal here. The goal is for female (sex) to be its own topic (which it is) and for female (gender) to be its own topic in the context of sociology, psychology, gender studies, etc. There are more than enough reliable sources to rationalize this distinction. We have an entire article called sex and gender distinction for god's sake.
  • Check the most recent discussions at those pages to see what prompted this. Yes as you say, this topic doesn't have WP:DUE in female, but it does have enough reliable sources to be its own article, which is made apparent if you look at any reliable source besides a dictionary.
  • based on a single new Merriam-Webster entry. That's not true in the slightest. The main reason I used a dictionary definition in the lede is because you and other editors have been claiming that the weight of dictionaries trump all other reliable sources, which is what WP:NOTDICTIONARY is supposed to avoid. Turning WP:NOTDICTIONARY around on me feels a lot like WP:GASLIGHT. Just look at your most recent arguments in Talk:woman and Talk:female where you're touting the unbeatable power of dictionary definitions...
  • All we need is brief material at female that the term sometimes refers to gender Is that really what you get from decades of scholarship, legal developments, and social developments -- a single sentence?
  • Other gender-related material belongs at woman. Except that gatekeepers who WP:OWN that article have prevented additional coverage of gender, which leaves us right back where we started. This is the embodiment of WP:STONEWALL. People who are resistant to change in one article claim the change needs to happen in another article (procedure over substance), and then when you go to that article, someone else directs you right back where you came from. The consensus in both those articles is a pretty strong rationale supporting WP:WHENSPLIT.
  • I don't think you actually disproved that this article has WP:VERIFIABILITY or WP:WHENSPLIT. Being loud is not the same as making an argument. The sources speak for themselves. And I'm gonna request that you lower your tone and don't equate years of debate and attempts to improve Wikipedia to complaining. I don't think that represents what's happening here at all and it's kind of hurtful. The void century (talk) 07:56, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
  • experienced editors - experience or number of edits doesn't make your opinion any more valid than others, except maybe that you have special powers like wp:admin. WP:SERVICE - "master" editors are not bestowed with more authority through this award than "novice" editors.. See also WP:CRED and WP:NOBIGDEAL. This is one of the most admirable philosophies in the wikipedia rules. Everyone is assumed to have WP:Good faith, no matter how long they've been here. The void century (talk) 08:34, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

    The use of dictionaries was entirely about how to write a concise first-sentence definition, not how to split entire article topics. And nobody at woman has prevented additional coverage of gender; in fact you were invited to rectify any such perceived shortcomings in the article body. That is where detailed material about the female gender belongs. It's just that editors didn't agree with the attempt to unbalance the lead by making the topic solely a matter of gender identity disconnected from sex, because e.g. numerous reliable sources about women, especially WP:MEDRS about women's health, being about female-sexed people. The corresponding and linked female article and its lead already discusses the gender-related meaning, too. And as for the sex and gender distinction, that article states that gender can refer to...social roles based on the sex of a person - in no way does it support the implication that sex and gender are totally disconnected from each other. They are distinct concepts by definition, but still related. Crossroads ^-talk- 14:31, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

    • how to write a concise first-sentence definition Thank you for clarifying. That wasn't how I read it.
    • you were invited I'd support adding more gender content to the body of woman, but I want to see how this article develops. We can always merge later, so I don't see the harm in letting this article be written for now, especially given how much WP:Notability it has.
    • The corresponding and linked female article that coverage of gender is insufficient, and it's most likely WP:OOS in a biology article.
    • I never said sex and gender are totally disconnected, and as you say, They are distinct concepts by definition. We agree on both of those things. Significantly distinct concepts are enough to rationalize separate pages. For example Life, a biology article, is related to Personal Life, a human article, and they are big enough concepts on their own to be separate pages. The void century (talk) 15:29, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

      This has no notability as distinct from the topic of woman. What sources are about female gender that are not about women? None. And how is the coverage of gender at female insufficient? What is there to additionally say there that doesn't belong at other articles? Maybe a sentence or two more could be added, but really, that's about it. Crossroads ^-talk- 17:46, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

      Any source that talks about girls for one would be not about women, as those are two distinct demographics delineated by age. For example this paper on autism has information relating to autism in both girls and women, and so uses female gender as an umbrella term. This is particularly important in autism research, because transgender autistic individuals present symptomatically in a way more typical to their gender identity than their sex assigned at birth. I'm fairly confident many other sources exists within MEDRS alone on this demographic distinction. Sideswipe9th (talk) 18:04, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

      Crossroads, first of all, Female (gender) is not an article about gender identity disconnected from sex; if you can't read the article, then don't !vote at AfD.

      Second, Woman isn't supposed to be a catchall article for material about female-gendered people, and editors at Female constantly cavil and kvetch about the inclusion of human gender at all (to the point where CaptainEek moves the embryonic "female" gender section inside the human species break, which shows just how far this POV goes).

      Are you seriously arguing that Female (gender) represents of all things a POVFORK of Woman? Why on earth would you think that? These are nested, notable topics, one of which has been consistently marginalized by article OWNers for more than a decade now. Why not let the sources speak for themselves on a fresh page? Newimpartial (talk) 16:49, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

      Thank you for explaining how this is a classic WP:POVFORK: POV forks generally arise when contributors disagree about the content of an article or other page. Instead of resolving that disagreement by consensus, another version of the article (or another article on the same subject) is created to be developed according to a particular point of view. This second article is known as a "POV fork" of the first, and is inconsistent with policy: all facts and major points of view on a certain subject should be treated in one article. And as for female, that talks about human gender right now and has for a long time. Crossroads ^-talk- 17:46, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

      So, to be clear, are you saying that the BALANCEd, DUE content on this topic belongs at Female, alongside the biology content? Because the OWNers of that article, and such allies as the Captain here, haven't supported any meaningful elaboration of gendered content at Female.

      POVFORK describes a scenario when editors disagree about the content, but the debates on Female are more about article scope than they are about POV (except for the editors pushing gender isn't real, but the more common view of the OWNers is something like gender isn't science and this article is science).

      I don't see how POVFORK has any weight against the creation of a new article on a clearly distinct topic - all of the STRAWMAN arguments in your !vote - against things the new article doesn't say and that those editing it don't believe - well, they say something about POV alright (yours) but not much about FORKs. Newimpartial (talk) 18:05, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

• Delete on the basis that a WHO source has been cited as saying something it clearly doesn't, and editorial synthesis is used to advance a position, this simply does not bode well for what is likely to follow. It's unfortunate, but based on this effort, and discussions at Talk:Woman, one can only conclude that this is WP:ACTIVIST editing. Acousmana 09:00, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Not sure what you mean:

  • From the WHO article: Gender refers to the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed. This includes norms, behaviours and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl or boy, as well as relationships with each other. How is that substantially different from saying Female gender pertains to sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles)?
  • Also from the WHO article: Gender and sex are related to but different from gender identity. Gender identity refers to a person’s deeply felt, internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond to the person’s physiology or designated sex at birth.
  • Reading that, I don't see how the line in Female (gender) is substantively any different: Female gender pertains to sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and/or gender identity, as opposed to female (sex) which is biological.
  • I copied that line almost word for word from the gender article which reads (referring to gender): Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. The same line in gender also links to the WHO, so I think it's a pretty far cry to call that WP:ACTIVIST, though I suppose I could have added the other sources linked there. If you had an issue with the interpretation of gender, you've had ample time to debate that in the talk:gender page.
  • As I said right from the start, the article was supposed to be a stub to be built on by the community, not a personal project. The void century (talk) 09:22, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

    "I copied that line almost word for word from the gender article..."

    recontextualising it in the process, what is actually stated is:

    Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity.

    you are inferring is that the words femininity and masculinity can be freely interchanged with the words female and male? the WHO source you offered states:

    Gender interacts with but is different from sex, which refers to the different biological and physiological characteristics of females, males and intersex persons, such as chromosomes, hormones and reproductive organs. Gender and sex are related to but different from gender identity.

    it continues:

    Gender and sex are related to but different from gender identity. Gender identity refers to a person’s deeply felt, internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond to the person’s physiology or designated sex at birth.

    in the entire WHO statement you cited the word female is used twice, and solely in the context of sex. They lead the statement with:

    Gender refers to the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed. This includes norms, behaviours and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl or boy, as well as relationships with each other. As a social construct, gender varies from society to society and can change over time.

    in the source you cited, why do you suppose the WHO have avoided employing the word "female" in reference to gender identity?

    i'm pretty sure there are sources that could be used to underpin what you wrote, but this isn't one of them. Acousmana 14:10, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

    Fair. I've generally seen "female" and "woman"/"girl" used interchangeably in reliable sources on gender, but some scholars have made the distinction you're talking about. It feels a little like undue weight on arbitrary semantic distinctions, but I agree with you it would be better to use a source that uses the word "Female" when defining female (gender). I'd welcome that edit if you have a source in mind. The void century (talk) 14:23, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

    "It feels a little like undue weight on arbitrary semantic distinctions", no, much simpler than that, no feeling involved, it's pragmatism; and using sources properly while being diligent about enuring no disjucntion exists between what is written and what is cited. If you can't do this, you shouldn't be writing articles. Acousmana 14:56, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

    @The void century:, one reliable source is here. Newimpartial (talk) 14:37, 23 July 2022 (UTC) ping added Newimpartial (talk) 15:14, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

    Here's another. Newimpartial (talk) 15:47, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Acousamana, I don't see any misuse of the WHO source there, and you haven't demonstrated any in any discussion I've seen. I am disappointed in you. Newimpartial (talk) 13:09, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

• Comment - I wouldn't have the current version of the article in my userspace, let alone draft space, and certainly not in mainspace.  Tewdar  09:19, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  It's a stub The void century (talk) 09:23, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  It's not good enough for a stub.  Tewdar  09:24, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Make it better? Nobody's stopping you. The void century (talk) 09:26, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  For reference, this is the initial entry in Female https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Female&oldid=251773

  • Are you really gonna claim that this stub is that much worse? They linked to seahorse in the lead section and didn't have any citations. The void century (talk) 09:36, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  • You're having an uphill struggle convincing people that Female (gender) should exist, unlike that stub, which didn't face such problems (over twenty years ago).  Tewdar  10:16, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

    What happened to "I'd support that."? The void century (talk) 10:26, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

    In principle, I'd support the creation of this article. And I've actually spent the last hour gathering sources to try and save your poxy article during Tewdar's Saturday Big Breakfast Time, so don't be such a smart-ass.  Tewdar  10:31, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

• Delete. For the same WP:POVFORK reasons already given. Until Biology rewrites the science of humans, the female sex is not a "gender". What a female sex is expected to be by family, society, religion, and culture is when gender comes into the picture, and social science takes over. WP:ACTIVIST editing is the bane of Wikipedia's existence. Pyxis Solitary (yak). L not Q. 10:29, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  @Pyxis Solitary How is this WP:ACTIVIST? I wanna go through the list so you can correct me.

  • Hostility - The only edits I have reverted were redirecting this article to another article. Other than that, I'm open to all edits and improvements. I never intended my initial stub to be the final article.
  • Removal of information - I haven't done that.
  • Addition of poorly sourced material - The WHO, Merriam-Webster, and APA are all reliable sources.
  • Addition of well-sourced but biased material - I guess there could be an argument made there. Is this what you were thinking?
  • Source misrepresentation - I can see how this would be interpreted as a misrepresentation of sources, but again, I'm open to all edits and improvements. When I first entered the discussion on talk:woman, I had assumed (like you) that female usually denotes sex and woman/girl are gender, but a look through many dictionaries and secondary sources indicated that female is also used to refer to female gender.
  • Biographies of living people - nope
  • Conflict of interest - no. I'm a cis person who works for a tech startup that has nothing to do with gender or biology. I do have a degree in biology, but that would make me biased in the opposite direction of this article. The most conflict of interest I have is knowing trans people in real life and respecting their preferred pronouns. The void century (talk) 11:29, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Also @Pyxis Solitary I see that you say L not Q, denoting "Lesbian not Queer" in your signature. I'm not making any assumptions, but rejecting queerness is often associated with the TERF movement. If this applies to you (again, not assuming), I'd hope that can consider whether your own biases are affecting your judgement on WP:Activist, WP:Verifiability and WP:Reliability in this case. The void century (talk) 11:55, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Please see WP:ASPERSIONS. Lots of LGBT people disagree with being called queer and the term is controversial for many reasons, despite the fact that some people try to make it be the umbrella term and refer to any LGBT individual as queer. Crossroads ^-talk- 14:38, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Just to be clear, Pyxis: you are expressing the viewpoint that biological sex exists, and gender roles and norms exist, but gender identity does not exist? And you are objecting to this article because it might contain information about gender identity?

  That sounds like activist editing, and you may be right that WP:ACTIVIST editing is the bane of Wikipedia's existence. Newimpartial (talk) 13:18, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  I didn't get that at all. Crossroads ^-talk- 14:38, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  If Wikipedia is only supposed to recognize the female sex and what the female sex is expected to be, then that leaves some very large gaps in the domain of gender. And promoting this gender identity-denying POV is inherently ACTIVIST. Newimpartial (talk) 14:44, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  That's a straw man fallacy, since no one is making the argument you are railing against. Furthermore, as many others have already pointed out, the very existence of the article Gender (or Gender identity, perhaps) tells us where that material already belongs.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:06, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

  "no one is making the argument you are railing against". And ... same ol' same ol', from the same ol' same ol'. Pyxis Solitary (yak). L not Q. 11:37, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

  Actually, that is precisely the argument Pyxis made: in the comment to which I replied, she said the female sex is not a gender (of course it isn't; the female gender is a gender, and that's what this article is about) and then she went on to gender only as what the female sex is expected to be. If Pyxis accepts that there is any encyclopaedic relevance to gender outside of this, well, she certainly hasn't communicated that in this discussion, where here view seems to be predicated on Female gender not existing as a specific topic.

  As far as your own view goes, SMcCandlish, we do not avoid having articles on Positrons or Hadrons just because we have an article on Particle physics. There is no rule against having an encyclopaedic article about a system, and then articles about the notable constituents of that system - in fact, this appears to be standard practice in Wikipedia. Newimpartial (talk) 12:42, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

• Redirect (or delete) to Trans woman as that article (and many others) cover this. This is a POVFORK and ACTIVIST editing and possibly a case of those editors feeling a bit of: Wikipedia:I just don't like it when they're not getting their way. I think Crossroads' comments said it best. Masterhatch (talk) 12:34, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Redirecting Female (gender) to Trans woman would be extremely WP:UNDUE. Female (gender) includes all women, not just trans women. The void century (talk) 12:48, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  This misframing of Female (gender) as being about Trans women is a classic example of activist editing. Please read Sex and gender distinction - this topic had been around for longer (actually, much longer) than Gender identity has been recognized. Newimpartial (talk) 12:57, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. gnu57 13:40, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
• Keep*Drafity Ignoring the content, it's clearly been moved too soon. It seems predictable that such an article would get lots of views and should be written out properly before being moved into the encyclopedia. I made some basic formatting fixes. CT55555 (talk) 13:50, 23 July 2022 (UTC) Updating to keep in light of article improvement and helpful explanatory summary by User:Immanuelle: User:Immanuelle/Deletion proposal of Female (gender) CT55555 (talk) 13:22, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

*:Also important to note that the article appears to be incorrect. Female does not only relate to humans - based on the first source in the article. CT55555 (talk) 13:52, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

• Female covers the biological sex meaning. Gender is WP:OOS for that article, supporting a WP:WHENSPLIT to cover Female (gender) meaning. The void century (talk) 13:58, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Female covers both meanings, and in so doing is neatly able to mean either or both when woman is defined as female. It's just that a few wanted to make it too heavily tilted toward gender when the article naturally has a lot more to say about non-humans because humans are covered at woman. There is no reason to imply that gender is completely disconnected. Crossroads ^-talk- 14:16, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Unless you're dealing with cosplay or other speculative fiction, I'm pretty sure that Female (gender) only applies to humans. Newimpartial (talk) 14:35, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Female (gender) only applies to humans. But when I commented, the article said that female (it did not limit to gender, it just said "female" at the time, it's since been changed) only applied to humans. It's since been corrected in the article. I think this updating corrections does support my draftification suggestion CT55555 (talk) 14:37, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

• Keep. The current contents are entirely neutral and unobjectionable. I find the claims otherwise to be completely mystifying. The only valid question is where this valid content belongs. The only other option might be a merge. Plausible merge targets might be Female, Woman or Gender but I'm not sure which would be best and maybe that's the argument for it being stand-alone. If there was a valid discussion that led to a decision to make this a stand-alone article then we should respect that. If the authors would like to make it a draft then that's fine but I see no reason to force them to. Maybe just let the people working on it work in peace and see what they come up with? It's only a few sentences so far but there is nothing to indicate that they are headed in the wrong direction. --DanielRigal (talk) 14:52, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  There was no valid discussion that supported creating this. Never was such a consensus reached. Rather, a few didn't like the existing consensus, so after very little new discussion they barged ahead and created this WP:FAITACCOMPLI. Crossroads ^-talk- 17:29, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  You do recognize that support (and opposition, for that matter) for the new article, as expressed at Talk:Woman, runs orthogonal to the long running POV disputes in this area? Newimpartial (talk) 17:56, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

• Keep. There clearly is a long history to this article based on the first edit summary. We should let it grow for a while before deciding what to do with it at least. Immanuelle 💗 (please tag me) 14:59, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose deletion. Female gender used to be a redirect to Gender as well. It has history — Tazuco ✉️ 15:20, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  I support draftifying as it is, but without deleting the page (leaving it temporarily as a redirect to gender again. — Tazuco ✉️ 16:56, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

• Keep. Given the discussion that led to the creation of the article, in which it was agreed to by editors of differing views as a way forward, it deserves an opportunity to grow before it is pounced on with an AFD. The accusations of it being a POVFORK or ACTIVIST editing above don't hold up when considering the article's origin, and certainly can't be based on the article's content, because it hasn't had the chance to be developed yet. Such accusations instead seem to be the result of editors projecting their own preconceptions and baggage from previous disputes onto something that may (or may not!) end up being a useful article. Please try to WP:AGF, just a little.--Trystan (talk) 16:34, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  It was not agreed to by editors of differing views, as many of us disagreed this should ever have been created. It is not too soon to delete because the foundational concept is misguided - that of treating "female gender" as distinct from "woman". Crossroads ^-talk- 17:22, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  That you didn't support its creation doesn't mean those who did weren't of differing views. Whether this article will be sufficiently distinct from Woman is a valid question. Personally, I think we should AGF and let the article develop for a bit. This is a complex area and would benefit from editors being less quick to condemn new proposals based on preconceptions.--Trystan (talk) 17:44, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

• Delete as a PoV fork. Crossroads covered every argument I would make, in more detail, so I won't regurgitate it. I'm not terribly opposed to redirecting to Trans woman or Gender (an argument can be made that someone familiar with our disambiguation practices might try the title "Female (gender)", and should arrive at which ever is the better article to send them to).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:36, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  A POVFORK of what, exactly? Where do you think this Notable topic should be covered? Newimpartial (talk) 16:39, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Gender or Trans woman, as I already made very clear.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:54, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  What? There isn't any content to Female (gender) that duplicates Trans woman from a different POV, nor would I expect there to be. Are we reading the same articles and sources? This seems like a WP:CIR issue, since you are pointing to irrelevancies. Newimpartial (talk) 20:06, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Not all who identify as female are trans women. Vexations (talk) 21:10, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Those who are not biologically female but gender-identify as female are generally trans. Between the existing articles Woman, Trans woman, Gender, and Gender identity, the topical scope of "Female (gender)" is already encyclopedically covered. This is a PoV fork of all three articles, and the title should probably redirect to Gender. (Or perhaps Gender identity; I'd forgotten until just now that it is already a separate article. However, since "female gender" also has a linguistics sense, Gender is probably the better target.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  rev'd. 01:35, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  I'm not sure how familiar you are with Wikipedia practices, but having articles on supersets and subsets doesn't prevent us from having articles about specific categories themselves. For sexuality we have Queer and Lesbian and Stone butch; we have Trans man and Trans woman and Nonbinary as well as Transgender. The question here is, do we have sources that address the category of "female" specifically in terms of gender, in social not biological terms and not exclusively focused on one subset of this category. I believe the answer is clearly "yes". Newimpartial (talk) 01:54, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  We can have subset articles, but we do not create/keep them without good reasons. "The question here is" not the one you posed. It is primarily "do we have so much encyclopedic material to write about this subset that it will not fit in Gender and other articles"? The answer to that question is clearly "no".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:49, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

  So did you drop your POVFORK argument, then? Or is this article somehow a POVFORK of Gender (which seems like a darned peculiar conceit)? Newimpartial (talk) 17:51, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

  What is there to say about it that doesn't belong at woman? Nothing, clearly, beyond basic DICDEF-type stuff. But as soon as this article would be kept, these same editors would make woman wikilink "female" to this article. So then, the chain of definitions becomes circular, and womanhood is defined as disconnected from sex. Crossroads ^-talk- 17:22, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  That seems unlikely, as there are many solutions to avoid that. For example the lead of Woman could be reformulated to something like A woman is an adult human of the female sex or gender.

  The issue that many editors have been trying to resolve at both man and woman is that the current wikilinks to male and female make it seem as though sex is the only determining characteristic for whether someone is a man or woman. Any attempts to resolve this at male and female have been blocked, because the scope of those articles is sex in all sex-based organisms not just humans. Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:30, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Except that's incorrect, because female clearly states, In humans, the word female can also be used to refer to gender. And: The word female comes from the Latin femella, the diminutive form of femina, meaning "woman"; it is not etymologically related to the word male, but in the late 14th century the spelling was altered in English to parallel the spelling of male.[5][6] Female can refer to either sex or gender.[7][8] Male is similar. What is there to "resolve", exactly? Crossroads ^-talk- 17:56, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  If that was true, then leaving aside the gender symbol, why are the only references to gender in female the last sentence of the lead (In humans, the word female can also be used to refer to gender. and the first sentence of the second paragraph of the etymology section (Female can refer to either sex or gender.? Why have attempts at adding gender related content to the article been persistently removed due to scope [1], [2]? And discussions on the talk page ("Gender" in lead, Should this article be disambiguated?) involved arguments that focus on Female being an article on biology? Sideswipe9th (talk) 18:41, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  But as soon as this article would be kept, these same editors would make woman wikilink "female" to this article. So then, the chain of definitions becomes circular, and womanhood is defined as disconnected from sex. Please quit with the mind reading and ASPERSIONS. As I have said already (below), the lede of Woman ought to link to both articles. Newimpartial (talk) 20:03, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Strongly oppose redirecting to trans woman, that would be an absolutely nonsensical and WP:SURPRISEing target. I'd prefer redirecting to Female (disambiguation), which provides a useful definition of female as gender, plus a link to Woman and Girl. – RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (💬 • 📝) 17:40, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Agreed on both counts. Redirecting to trans woman would be comically incorrect and possibly be the second most bizarre act of cis erasure I have ever seen. (The first most bizarre being the weird "transvestigator" cult that claims that pretty much every famous person is secretly trans as part of a completely pointless and nonsensical conspiracy organised by... well, I think you can guess who they have in mind.) If we are to redirect, and I'm not saying that we should, then the disambiguation page is almost certainly the best target as it allows the readers to decide what they want instead of taking them somewhere that they might not expect or find helpful. DanielRigal (talk) 13:14, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

• Keep On Wikidata, female (Wikidata:Q6581072) is used in "sex or gender" (P21) to indicate that the human subject is a female, which I think can be more clearly described as "having a female gender identity". It is distinct from female organism. It currently points to this article: Female (gender). If Female (gender) is deleted, Q6581072 could point to Female gender again, like it used to, and redirect to Female again, but that is the subject of female organism (Q43445), and clearly wrong, because here we're referring to the gender identify of humans, not the sex of organism. In this context, female is an instance of gender identity. There many different instances of gender identity. For a list, see [3].List of gender identities lists Male and Female, which are not articles about the gender identity of a human, but the sex of an organism. We ought to be able to make the distinction between those two. It would be an omission not to have an item that would refer to the largest group of gender identities: humans who identify as female. There is abundant literature about the subject. Vexations (talk) 16:59, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  If this article is kept, Male (gender) would also be a logical counterpart to create. Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:11, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  or we could have an article on d:Q20686840 (male and female) item. We also have Female (disambiguation) — Tazuco ✉️ 17:25, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Next, we might wonder whether our Male and female (gender) article is overly binaristic and exclusionary to genders outside that paradigm. Then we'd rename the article to something like, (just spitballing here) Gender. – RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (💬 • 📝) 05:07, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

  Nowhere in Wikipedia policy are Wikidata entries relevant to whether an article here should exist. Wikidata is WP:UGC and not a reliable source. Crossroads ^-talk- 17:14, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  And yet we derive data from Wikidata pretty frequently in infoboxes, short descriptions, the {{official website}} template, etc. Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:22, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Fixing Wikidata would be a good idea. Drmies (talk) 17:18, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Vexations, the point Crossroads made above @17:14, 23 July is decisive here, imho. But just fyi: Wikidata has all sorts of problems; wrt to the issue we're talking about now, see Bonnie and Clyde problem at Wikidata. Mathglot (talk) 09:29, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

  @Mathglot that is worth noting in the future as sometimes I've found myself translating pages because they were conspicuously absent in one language and realizing that was due to the Bonnie and Clyde problem. Sorry this is unrelated to the deletion discussion Immanuelle 💗 (please tag me) 11:40, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

  I thought that it might be helpful to consider how the way that Wikidata structures things can inform our thinking about how we do that as well. I use Wikidata a lot for complex queries on Wikipedia article subjects and especially the properties we've been discussing here are extensively used for research into how Wikipedia's subjects are gendered. It's incredibly useful. I did not mean to suggest that Wikidata is a reliable source. Neither Wikipedia nor Wikidata is perfect in the way it handles complex taxonomies, but thinking in terms of classes and instances can clarify things like what is actually subset of what, as with woman, girl and female here. I meant to suggest that in this particular case Wikipedia has it right, not because it's authoritative, but because someone thought about a problem and found a solution that works. Vexations (talk) 11:50, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

• Draftify or delete. Per discussions on the article talk page (mainly [4] and [5]), we need clarity about what the article's meaning, purpose, and proper form is before it gets knitted into other articles and starts to undermine WP:NPOV broadly and irreparably. I would prefer for it to be sent to drafts as willing editors might be able to create a page that I can't currently foresee, but the more questions I ask of the article's supporters, the more inevitable it seems that this will end up as a WP:POVFORK instead. Clicriffhard (talk) 18:25, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Keep (for now). It remains to be seen whether this can be turned into a credible article without being weaponised against other articles, but the current situation, where people are trying to jam two related but quite separate concepts onto the "Female" page, doesn't seem very satisfactory either - it just ends up undermining that article's ability to explain female sex in a clear and focused way. Some might prefer to fix that by deleting references to "female gender", but it is a fact, I think, that "female" is sometimes used to describe perceived gender rather than sex class. It doesn't seem like a terrible thing to me for Wikipedia to present the two concepts separately, with some linking between the two articles as appropriate. Give it a chance? Clicriffhard (talk) 17:30, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

Just to clarify what I mean by "weaponised": I can imagine a situation where editors start trying to divert all manner of links that currently point at Female to this article instead, and if that happens then there are obviously going to be a lot of arguments about which is more appropriate. I hope that's not the intention, but this is as good a time and place as any to ask whether there would be a neutral solution. If the general feeling is that there wouldn't be a neutral solution, then arguments for this article's existence will start to look more like activism. Clicriffhard (talk) 17:49, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

• Question What content is meant to be in this article and how does it fit in with the current content of Female and Woman? What content is unique to Female (gender) that wouldn't properly fit in the other two? Springee (talk) 17:33, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  I would assume that the continuing existence of this article would mean that any gender-related content was to be moved over here from Female, and that article clarified to be about the sex class specifically. Clicriffhard (talk) 17:38, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Springee, exactly. I urge participants to be laser-focused on the question, is female (gender) a WP:POV fork of female and woman? Crossroads ^-talk- 18:02, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  I'm not sure that's right though, is it? It's not a different POV on the same concept. It's a different concept which (unhelpfully, but nevertheless) has been given the same name. Clicriffhard (talk) 18:13, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  It is a different POV though - it was because they weren't satisfied with how much emphasis each of those articles gave to gender, and rather than discuss further or do an RfC, they created this. Now, as a whole article, it is more difficult to undo. Crossroads ^-talk- 19:35, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Not sure who they is, but are you really saying that Female (gender) is more appropriately treated as part of the article Female, which is primarily a biological article? Would you also propose that we not have articles like Women's association football or Lesbian, because they could be treated as part of broader topics? Newimpartial (talk) 19:46, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  The correct analogy would be creating articles like female (gender) association football or female (gender) homosexuality. Obviously these would be CFORKs. Crossroads ^-talk- 01:15, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

  This is tiresome, Crossroads: you are assuming the thing you are purporting to prove. In the case of sexuality, we do in fact have articles on overlapping sexualities, rather than assisting that all content on lesbianism be channeled into Homosexuality, for example. The topic of association football includes women, but we also have a specific article on the women's game.

  But for some reason, when it comes to gender, you insist that all content that is specific to gender belongs to Gender, Gender identity, etc., with some DUE dregs tolerated at Woman and Female. Why on earth should that be? Are you in denial that the RS literature contains a healthy supply of content that is specific to gender and specifically female? Newimpartial (talk) 01:58, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

  I get what you're saying, but WP:POVFORK refers to the creation of:

  "another version of the article (or another article on the same subject)"

  This is neither, unless you think that "female sex" and "female gender" are the same subject. I do not - they're related and sometimes conflated, but they are different subjects and I think that reliable sources generally treat them as such.

  Not that it should matter, but I'm making these arguments from a perspective on WP:GENSEX articles that is generally a lot closer to yours than to the editors that you're disagreeing with. Clicriffhard (talk) 20:20, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  To be clear here, my opinion on this sub-question is no, and in fact the idea of a POVFORK in this area makes no sense. That's like saying Chicago (play) is a POVFORK of Chicago the city. They're different topics with the same name, it's not a POV to have different topics with the same name. Loki (talk) 02:01, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  To answer your question, Springee: Female would be distinguished from Female (gender) and presumably given some disambiguation notices as pointers. There would be no overlapping content.

  Woman already overlaps with Female and that would be unaffected; any content from Woman that is "gender-only" could be summarized from a robust Female (gender) article when we have one, but much of Woman would continue, as it already does, to discuss phenomena where biological sex and gender overlap and cannot easily be distinguished using the available sources. (The late Flyer22Reborn actually made this point quite clearly, as I recall.) Newimpartial (talk) 18:20, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Quick question on Woman. That article begins:

  "A woman is an adult female human."

  If Female was an article about the sex class specifically, how would you fix the opening sentence of Woman to acknowledge the sex/gender duality? Might sound like quite a specific question, but I'm trying to head off possible issues created by this article's existence and check that there are neutral solutions. Clicriffhard (talk) 18:34, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  I don't think that question is in scope for this AfD. Newimpartial (talk) 18:39, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Again, I'm checking that there are neutral solutions to issues created by this article's existence. It's an important factor in judging whether the separation of the two subjects is a benefit to the encyclopedia or whether it's inevitably going to lead to yet more POV activism. Clicriffhard (talk) 18:55, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  I would expect the sentence in question (in Woman) to be rewritten so it is clear that "Woman" refers to a (biologically) Female adult, or a Female (gender) adult, depending on the context. This is what the existing text already means, but the meaning could be made much more clear with an explicit distinction and separate links. Newimpartial (talk) 19:04, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Thanks. That doesn't seem too bad (and might even be an improvement on the current wording) so I'll stick with my provisional Keep above. Extraordinary to be on the same side of an argument as you for once... Clicriffhard (talk) 19:08, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  There appears to be a clear benefit for the encyclopedia to provide more information, as described above by Newimpartial, which appears well-supported by reliable sources, instead of a limited version based on what may be original research that does not appear supported by RS. From my view, we need to follow the sources, and there appears to be substantial content that can be developed for this topic and a benefit for readers for these complex topics to be expanded and appropriately linked. Beccaynr (talk) 19:12, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  I think we agree but not sure you mean by "a limited version based on what may be original research that does not appear supported by RS"?

  In any event, my question is not about whether "female gender" should be covered (it should if the sources are sufficient and adequate) but whether the interests of the encyclopedia are better served by covering it in the same article as female sex or separately. Clicriffhard (talk) 19:19, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  I also think we agree, and believe that your contributions to this discussion have been helpful in focusing on the issues of support in RS for what best serves the encyclopedia. When I read statements such as "Other gender-related material belongs at woman", I am concerned that this perspective is not supported by RS, including because of RS incorporated into List of gender identities and identified in the related AfD. From my view, as I developed that article, I became concerned about how far behind the encyclopedia may be from RS and the apparent need for further development in accordance with RS. I think this article can help develop substantial encyclopedic content that will then also benefit related articles. Beccaynr (talk) 19:42, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  I see what you mean - and yes, I think we do agree. For me it really comes down to three questions:

  (1) Are there sufficient and adequate sources to support an article about "female gender"?

  (2) Do reliable sources treat "female gender" as sufficiently distinct from "female sex" to justify separate articles?

  (3) Is there any reason to think that separating the subjects would be to the detriment of any other articles?

  I'm trying to consider (2) and (3) pre-emptively, but quite honestly I'd be fine with taking a "wait and see" approach to (1). If people are given a chance to improve this article and it still ends up being a collection of low-quality odds and sods, or if the separation ends up causing problems elsewhere, another AFD is always an option. Clicriffhard (talk) 20:12, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  I'm still not sure I understand what content is meant to go into this article. I can see the gender vs biology split but is that something that can't be handled within the current two articles? What content is in either of the current articles that would need to be moved here. What new content would be added here that previously didn't have a home? Springee (talk) 22:12, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Based on the List of gender identities article, content could include e.g. health, sociology, law, and culture. For example, major social media companies now offer expanded gender identity options, anti-discrimination laws have also expanded, and there appear to be a variety of RS available that can help further develop what is only outlined in the list article, where 'female' appears in multiple entries. There appears to be substantial content that does fit not well in a broad biology-focused article that is not limited to humans. Beccaynr (talk) 22:32, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Not sure about all of these. For instance, the citation you've proposed for law clearly talks about legal gender in a general sense, but it's not clear to me that it relates specifically to female gender, aside from supporting the idea that the word "female" is sometimes used to describe someone's gender identity. Similarly, the citation for health says plenty about gender identity but vanishingly little about female gender in particular. Clicriffhard (talk) 22:53, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  I'm not offering legal advice, but the example of the NYC Human Rights Commission Gender Identity/Gender Expression: Legal Enforcement Guidance is not about legal gender, e.g. "Recognizing the profoundly debilitating impact of gender-based discrimination on transgender, non-binary, and other gender non-conforming people, the amendment makes clear that “gender-based discrimination—including, but not limited to, discrimination based on a person's actual or perceived sex, and discrimination based on a person’s gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior, or expression—constitutes a violation of the City’s Human Rights Law.”" I am offering examples intended to identify broad topic areas that could be expanded and do not appear to be within the focus of a broad biology-focused article that goes far beyond humans. Beccaynr (talk) 23:21, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Yes, that's what I mean: it's about the legal ramifications of gender generally, not female gender specifically. There's little to nothing there that could add to THIS article.

  FWIW I am a lawyer, but not NY-qualified, so I won't be offering legal advice there either... Clicriffhard (talk) 23:33, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  Supporting the idea that the word "female" is sometimes used to describe someone's gender identity. This is splitting hairs. What do you think female gender means in the phrase "female gender identity"? This is like saying that female biology doesn't deserve it's own article because sometimes it refers to female gametes while other times it refers to female organisms, but it much more rarely refers to the generic term "female". The void century (talk) 00:10, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  I think you need to re-read my comment and the article in question, you're way off. Clicriffhard (talk) 01:04, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  The legal aspect seems to be one of the areas where RS-based clarity could be further developed and beneficial - for example, "woman" does not appear to be "the normal gender term" because of how the terminology works in various domains, including but not limited to law, culture, health, etc. GScholar offers many "female gender" sources, including medical, cultural, and sociological. This is a complex topic, and I think the 'wait and see' approach works well while this article develops, based on the available sources and potential subsections. The topic of sex has spinoffs that include Female and Male, and there appears to be similar support in sources for spinoffs from the broader topic of gender as well, including female. Beccaynr (talk) 00:13, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  I agree about "wait and see", but Springee's question was about what content would go in this article. My point is that those sources in particular do support the idea of "female" being a class of gender (as well as a sex class) but they don't actually provide much (if any) content that's specific to "female gender". Where they relate to gender identity, they say very little that's specific to female gender identity. Where they relate to legal gender, they're equally about male and female legal genders, i.e. the content is more relevant to Legal gender. So while other sources might support the need for a separate article specific to "female gender", as far as I can tell, those two don't. Clicriffhard (talk) 01:13, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  In lawyertalk terms, it seems premature to evaluate this like a motion for summary judgment and specifically evaluate all potentially available sources, as opposed to broad subtopic areas that could benefit from further development. I am also wary of trying to add a bunch of additional sources, because the larger discussion seems to be much more about the basic structural issues. Beccaynr (talk) 01:46, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  Basically, yes. I'm a bit wary of how this article could be used to sideline female biology as a marginal aspect of "femaleness", and I also think it's fair for people to question what content would fit here, but Wikipedia is inherently collaborative so I don't expect individual editors to have a full answer to that. If we let the article develop for a short time and the sources just aren't there, that's when I'll be joining calls to delete.

  I do think, though, that it's important to figure out what this article is supposed to be. Some clearly assumed that it would be about the class of gender identity, whereas others seem to want it to include a whole bunch of loosely related concepts. We can't meaningfully declare ourselves "for" or "against" unless we're all talking about the same thing. Clicriffhard (talk) 02:03, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

• Keep The previous discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of gender identities seems relevant, including for the reliable sources identified, as well as the reliable sources that have since been included in List of gender identities. Under these circumstances, this article appears to be a reasonable WP:SPINOFF to provide greater detail on a related topic based on reliable sources. Beccaynr (talk) 18:54, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
• Delete per other delete arguments above; no persuasive reason to split up female or duplicate woman, and I don't think the sources support such an organization. Levivich (talk) 21:56, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

  @Levivich: an amusing aside for you: under certain ambient light conditions I can't always distinguish the default black text font on the page (which my eyedropper sees as #202122 and not black), and wikilink-blue. So, I'm reading your comment, and seeing an undifferentiated, "no persuasive reason to split up female or duplicate woman, and I say to myself: "We've got an article on duplicate woman? I wonder what that's about?" So, he goes to click it... and then... the 'aha' moment! B / Mathglot (talk) 06:43, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

  Just reaffirming my delete !vote. This isn't a WP:GNG issue, it's a WP:PAGEDECIDE issue. Despite the length of this AFD, I still don't see any persuasive reasons to have this be a stand-alone article. I don't think it's been WP:HEYd, I don't think it should be draftified, because the problem isn't with the quality of the article, it's with the notion of having this topic on a separate page. Everything that is in Female (gender) would be better covered (and is already better covered) in other articles like gender, gender role, woman, and female. I still see this, at bottom, as creating an article for the purpose of changing the link to female in the opening sentence of Woman so that when we say in that article that "A woman is an adult female human", we aren't linking "female" to female because that's an article about a sex, not a gender. And I get it, there are editors (myself included) who do not want Wikipedia to suggest, in its own voice, that a woman must be (born) female. That's not a reason to create a new article; in fact, if we create a new article for that reason, we're basically WP:RGWing and WP:POVPUSHing. The lead sentence of woman should be fixed at Talk:Woman, not by creating a new article. Or in other words, we shouldn't be making statements about human rights issues through our hyperlinks and page titles. Levivich (talk) 15:27, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

  The argument that everything that belongs in Female (gender) would be better treated in Female or Woman is pretty clearly falsified by the Talk histories of those articles. And the idea that this article shouldn't be because it's part of gender/gender role (and/or femininity) - well, that looks like positron-particle physics (and/or electron situation to me. (And since I haven't addressed this elsewhere, I'll point out here that femininity in its current form has fairly evident scope creep issues that could be fixed more easily if we able to create a robust Female (gender) article.) Newimpartial (talk) 15:32, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

  I literally have no idea what any of that means. Whatever it is you think is pretty clearly falsified, or fairly evident, is neither clear nor evident to me. And your comment is, to me, indicative of this entire discussion: people just asserting that "clearly" this or that or the other thing is true. Asserting clarity is unpersuasive. But your comment also reinforces my view. You what is clear to me? This article was created because some editors are trying to win some argument at Talk:Woman or Talk:Female. That is a bad reason to create an article. Levivich (talk) 15:40, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

  People at Talk:Female keep arguing that because it is primarily an article about biology, it is UNDUE to emphasize female gender in the article. People at Talk:Woman keep arguing that the topic of that article is defined (either exclusively or primarily) by "biological sex", and that therefore it is UNDUE to emphasize female gender in that article. So if there is reliably sourced content about female gender - which I think is obvious - it ought to have a place on wikipedia where it is not constantly subject to exclusion. There is some reason to think Female is primarily a biological topic, and there is some reason to think Woman is a topic where a lot of the literature makes reference to "biological sex". Neither of those LOCALCONSENSUS outcomes, however, implies that reliably sourced content on female gender ought not to be included in Wikipedia article space. Being able to include reliably sourced content on a clearly defined topic is a good reason to create a Wikipedia article, IMO. Newimpartial (talk) 15:58, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

  What you are describing is literally the definition of WP:POVFORK. You're saying that because we can't get content X into article Y, we therefore should create article Z to hold content X. That is a POV fork.

  The female gender role is called "woman". The sexes are covered in male/female, and the two corresponding genders are covered in man/woman (boy/girl for children).

  So I'm right: this is about winning an argument at Talk:Woman about how the female gender role should be covered there. Well, that should be handled at that talk page, not by forking the article. The editors at Talk:Woman who think the gender role is WP:UNDUE for inclusion in that article are just flat wrong. The solution to that is not to fork the article. If anything, forking the article would make Woman worse, if it means removing everything about the female gender role from Woman. And, in fact, the gender role is covered, well-covered, at Woman, including in the lead. So if some editors feel that it shouldn't be more emphasized, maybe they're right, I don't know, but starting a POVFORK is definitely wrong. Levivich (talk) 16:09, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

  I'm afraid that you're I'm right is a rather misleading oversimplification of the discussion at the two Talk pages. For example, the influential diff I linked elsewhere didn't argue that gender roles should be excluded from woman; it argued that they were relevant among topics that relate to sex/are relevant to biology. They are included as part of a biologically-grounded article scope. For both articles, the LOCALCONSENSUS maintains that their primary aspects relate to sex (and this isn't precisely wrong in either case).

  However, treating the material that is about gender, not sex as though it were a POVFORK of the same topic is clearly a misapplication of policy. It is as though Behavioral economics or Institutional economics were taken to AfD because they are relatively unimportant subtopics of Economics, so that the only due discussion of either should be at the parent article.

  As far as the female gender role is called "woman", that is certainly one thing it is called, but "woman" has at least half a dozen relevant definitions of which roughly half are not related to gender, and some of the more influential do not distinguish sex from gender. The local consensus - that we can only discuss gender at the margins of Woman, because a lot of the sources don't confine themselves to discussing gender - can't possibly pre-empt the creation of an article that reflects that sourced content. The idea of a POVFORK implies that there is one topic that can be discussed from different standpoints, but the topic of female gender simply is not the same topic as that of female biology. The distinction is in the ontology, not in the standpoint. Newimpartial (talk) 16:30, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

  "Both on a theoretical and a linguistic level, the terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ are conflated. In English, physiological/bodily aspects are often referred to as sex which regards genitalia, chromosomes, and bodily attributes, while social aspects are referred to as gender (Frohard-Dourlent et al., 2017; West & Zimmerman, 1987), including cultural meanings associated with behaviour, personality and expressions conventionally labelled as feminine or masculine (Reisner et al., 2015). Despite this conflation, sex seems to be a poor proxy for gender, because it is incorrect to assume that sex precedes and determines gender (Bittner & Goodyear-Grant, 2017; Butler, 1990; Fausto-Sterling, 2012; Westbrook & Saperstein, 2015). Instead, the conflation is normative and excludes many individuals with other experiences and/or identities. Consequently, some scholars suggest using the terms ‘gender/sex’ together to move away from the idea that sex is an objective category or an objective biological phenomenon (van Anders et al., 2014)....The traditional dichotomous response alternatives to ‘sex’ are female/male while the traditional dichotomous response alternatives to ‘gender’ might be woman/man or feminine/masculine (Ansara & Hegarty, 2014; Westbrook & Saperstein, 2015). However, the most common way in social science research is to ask about ‘gender’ with the two possible response alternatives of ‘male/female’ (Westbrook & Saperstein, 2015). This exemplifies how researchers, and people in general, by use of language, make implicit and probably unconscious assumptions that conflate sex with gender. Thus, a question that asks about gender and has female/male as answer options obscures what the researchers are aiming at and what participants respond to – bodily attributes, legal gender, or self-defined gender identity." What is gender, anyway: a review of the options for operationalising gender. Acousmana 16:49, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

  I'm not sure what the point is of these cherry-picked quotes. Is female sex sometimes not distinguished from female gender? Sure, and the article Woman reflects that. Is female sex never distinguished from female gender? Well, you haven't really supported that (if that was your aim). Newimpartial (talk) 17:09, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

  "I'm not sure what the point is of these cherry-picked quotes." the adversarial tone is rather unfortunate, the article is linked. Acousmana 11:08, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

That three-year-old diff is not at all influential, nobody references it or remembers it except you just now, and no such local consensus exists. This is all contrived rationalization for a POV fork. Levivich nailed it. I'll add that female already had information on gender in the body and the lead; this was created because some wanted even more emphasis on gender there, and instead of reaching consensus or doing an RfC if that failed, they created a fork. Crossroads ^-talk- 17:53, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

examples from Female where scope and DUE considerations were used to exclude gender-related content

From Talk: It is indeed UNDUE because the vast majority of the sources on "female" are about the sex - Crossroads Most of the article is not about the gender aspect - Springee I oppose more than a token reference in this article because I was under the impression that this article was about the female sex - Tewdar Speaking of due, in my mind that's the central issue here. I'll just throw this out there: there are something like 2 to 30 million insect species. Almost all of them reproduce sexually; otoh, none of them have a gender identity - Mathglot, presumably explaining the removal linked below. From edits: removal of the only mention of gender from the body of the article - Acousmana "This is not the "Human female" article; plants and animals don't have a gender identity" - Mathglot placing the proposed section on gender inside a hierarchy based on biological species - CaptainEek minimizing gender-related material within the lead, and removing discussion of the actual scope of the article - Crossroads I didn't go back more than a couple of weeks on Talk, and I'm sure I could have found more examples from article edits as well. These examples are from Female (for variety), but the consensus to exclude gender-related content about female humans (apart from a brief mention) seems clear. A number of editors - including some who are now treating Female (gender) as a POVFORK - clearly see sourced material on female gender as out of scope for Female.

Newimpartial (talk) 18:30, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

• Merge and redirect – "Female (gender)", which is to say, using the term female as an alternative to the normal gender term woman, is merely a terminology choice. Even if there is something notable about the topic of using the term female as a gender term rather than a biological term (which clearly does happen), there simply isn't that much to say about it, and WP:NOPAGE applies here, as it could easily be accommodated in a new "#Terminology" or "#Types" section at Gender identity.

Currently, the article Gender identity, which has a major (H2) section on § Non-binary gender identities, curiously lacks a section on § Binary gender identities (maybe because it is so blue-sky obvious that nobody has bothered so far?) and one should be created. (Possibly both the existing and new sections could be under a new "#Types" section.) That new section would be a proper container for the content here, and the subsection could be topped with {{Further}} links to Female and to Woman following summary style. This Afd candidate title should redirect to that section.

P.S. There isn't an article Binary gender identity either; rev your engines... Mathglot (talk) 22:59, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

I've added stub sections §§ Terminology​ and Binary gender identities at article Gender identity. Mathglot (talk) 23:28, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

• This AfD was created almost immediately after the article was created, so much of the energy that could have been spent on WP:BUILDWP has been spent arguing the merits here. I don't think there's enough evidence to say there simply isn't that much to say about it. That's simply not true.
• This article is not solely about gender identity. Gender identity is just one facet of female (gender). I agree the lede needs to cover more of the topic, but I don't think the entire article should be pigeon-holed into Gender identity.
• I support you in creating stubs for binary gender identities, but that's not a replacement for this article. The void century (talk) 23:52, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

On the one hand, I have no idea what the title of the article means, if it's not female as gender identity; so you might need a move to a new title such that it makes sense. Secondly, per WP:AT:

The title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles.

I don't see how "Female (gender)" satisfies either of those conditions. You say,

This article is not solely about gender identity.

so, what is it about? I can't read your mind, and that's how I interpret it.

Secondly, your own words, the WP:LEADSENTENCE defines it as: "A female is a human with a gender identity that is the opposite of male. So, *you* are defining your article by discussing female in terms of gender identity (and by implication, male as well). If it's about something else, you need to say so in the first sentence. Mathglot (talk) 00:55, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't really think this is really a solution to any problem worth solving. Woman consists mostly of material where "biological sex" overlaps with gender and cannot readily be distinguished from it; Female includes lots of biological material while its OWNers repeatedly move to exclude or marginalize material related to gender. We need to have a place in article space for the RS material to do with gender rather than sex, and not all of that material is about gender identity. This really ought to be obvious to experienced editors. Newimpartial (talk) 23:43, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

My hope is that my reference above to what is available on GScholar, as well as medical, legal, sociological, etc sources helps emphasize that this notable topic is not limited to gender identity, and helps demonstrate per WP:NEXIST why this article should not be quickly deleted. Beccaynr (talk) 00:58, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Most of those results for 'female gender' are actually using gender as a synonym for sex, despite our marvellous sex and gender distinction article which insists that these concepts are distinct...  Tewdar  11:44, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

We do have that place - woman. What is there to say here that does not fit either there or as a relatively brief explanation at female? Why cannot female simply cover both sex as well as brief material - perhaps these exact four short sentences - explaining that it can also refer to the gender based on that sex? Crossroads ^-talk- 01:03, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Some content in woman could merge into this article and be expanded per the sources, e.g. Woman#Culture_and_gender_roles. I have also noted areas that could potentially be expanded in my comments above. There does not appear to be a brief way to address this complex topic, particularly due to the volume of available sources. Beccaynr (talk) 01:15, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

That would be removing material that belongs in that article. Yes, there are very many sources on the topic of 'female gendered people' (a.k.a. women), but we would divide that into topics like 'women and X', 'women in Y', etc., not by having two articles on the same topic. Crossroads ^-talk- 01:24, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Crossroads, re: What is there to say here that does not fit in Woman or Female? Content that is specifically about gender (and specifically female). As noted above, the late Flyer22 expressed eloquently the view that most of the content of Woman deals with matters where gender and biological sex are not readily distinguished in the sorces, and that the inclusion of content specific to gender would be unwelcome. Even more editors (including many participants in this AfD) have made equivalent arguments at Female. It is about time we had an article discover the reliably sourced material on female gender without facing constant STONEWALLING, mostly from editors who are fundamentally hostile to the human sciences at large. Newimpartial (talk) 01:40, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't remember anyone ever saying that gender-only content doesn't belong at woman, least of all Flyer22 - and even if she did say that once years ago, so what? The stuff about "hostile to the human sciences" is a strawman too. Crossroads ^-talk- 05:32, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

• Keep This article should have been allowed to develop before this nomination was made, so the actual content scope of what it is trying to cover could be properly evaluated. As it is, this nomination and many of the Delete comments above, some of them even rather explicitly so, appears to be a part of a conflict between actively anti-transgender editors and everyone else. Silverseren^C 01:24, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
• Delete per WP:FORK basically. Whatever needs to be said can be said in Female. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:30, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Canvass - this looks like canvassing from The void century. It is best to let the community come to this discussion organically, and to try not to over-participate in the discussion. Bruxton (talk) 00:31, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

I do not think that is canvassing. Female (gender) arose from a discussion at Talk:Female, and all of the editors who were notified via that had yet to contribute here at the time of the notification. Sideswipe9th (talk) 00:37, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Definitely not canvassing. Per bullet 3 at WP:APPNOTE: "The talk page of one or more directly related articles", and that is as directly related an article as it would be possible to find. Mathglot (talk) 01:04, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Speaking of which, I've notified all four listed WikiProjects, as well as NPOVN and the WP:CFORK guideline talk page. Newimpartial earlier notified the LGBT Wikiproject. Other notifications may be worthwhile too. It's evident that with 70 kb in just over 24 hours, this is going to be very contentious, so we should get as many editors as possible to increase the chances of the best outcome. Crossroads ^-talk- 01:22, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

It is over-participation by the same editors. For instance 21 separate posts from The void century about 20 from Crossroads, 21 from Newimpartial. And yes, asking people to come here after you know they favor your own opinion, is the very definition of canvassing. Bruxton (talk) 01:26, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

I think "over-participation" (which I've certainly contributed to) is kind of unavoidable when an AFD is started before people have had the chance to discuss the article on its own talk page or another that's related. There's a lot still to work out, even down to what this article is meant to cover, and we're having to do it in the comments here. Clicriffhard (talk) 01:32, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Maybe a good example of why editor's should not move an article to main space when there is nothing there. Instead of all this hand wringing in the AfD - anyone can turn this stub into an article. Instead it looks very much the same as it did when I redirected it, and when another editor suggested a redirect. My advice to everyone concerned is this: state your rationale once and then leave it to other editors. If you think the article should be in main space, go improve it. Bruxton (talk) 01:50, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

I know for myself, I'm very hesitant to put any content into the article right now while there's the possibility it will be deleted at the closure of this discussion. That said I'll repeat my objection from my original reply, that because the article had the {{in creation}} template on it, it should not have been nominated for deletion, as AFDs often preclude article development while their discussions are ongoing. Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:18, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Ok. To be honest I'm not sure where this "over-participation" idea has come from anyway - if there's a broadly held view that you should "state your rationale once and then leave it to other editors" then it's passed me by.

Incidentally, a few of us are arguing to keep the article for now on the basis that other editors might yet improve it, rather than claiming to have the sources or the will to improve it ourselves. "If you think the article should be in main space, go improve it" doesn't allow for that. Clicriffhard (talk) 02:29, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

The closest guidance I'm aware to on this is WP:BLUDGEON, though I do not think we're there yet, mostly because the volume of comments have been restricted to a couple of !votes. Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:50, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'm going to have to get some sleep now anyway, so I'll be putting my bludgeon away for the night. Interested to see where this ends up though. Clicriffhard (talk) 02:57, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Only, "asking people to come here after you know they favor your own opinion"—has not happened, so stop introducing a red herring here; it's inappropriate. Also, the whole discussion is inappropriate on this page; this is AFD. If you believe anyone has engaged in WP:CANVASSING, the appropriate place to address your comments and/or accusations is their User talk page, so feel free to do that. I invite any non-involved or sighing user to hat or collapse this subsection. (Title added.) Mathglot (talk) 01:35, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

• Comment: Based on the title, and the disagreements in discussions above, I have no idea what the article is even supposed to be about. It seems like it could be a kitchen-sink title, where you can throw anything into it that loosely seems to be about either of those things. What I understand from the current title, is a shorter version of the title: Conflated usage of the term female to indicate a gender, like this, and that is also supported by the WP:LEADSENTENCE. But I've already kind of been told that that's wrong. If it *doesn't* mean that, then what? How can we even vote on whether to delete an article, if we don't know what it's about? Is the topic even notable? Who knows—what's the topic? Mathglot (talk) 01:17, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

If we can't even tell what the article is about, then we delete it as unencyclopedic. That doesn't preclude an identifiable, clear topic later forming the basis for a more sensible article.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:39, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

I think this is a good question. I had initially assumed it was about "female" gender identity, but am now being told that it won't be, instead being an odd coalition of loosely related subjects like gender identity, legal gender/sex, gender roles etc., i.e. a pretty comprehensive article on womanhood that excludes female biology, which would be covered by the now much more niche female. Not sure that's the right way to introduce "balance". Clicriffhard (talk) 01:40, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is saying that. The article Woman covers the material where sex and gender aren't distinguished in the RS; that material would remain in Woman and be out of scope for Female (gender). Newimpartial (talk) 01:45, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Sure, but you mentioned, for example, "female gender norms" being included here. I'm not sure what makes them more closely related to "female gender identity" (which would be grouped with them in this article) than they are to "female sex" (which wouldn't). If this isn't specifically an article about "female gender identity", I think a bit of clarity is needed about what it actually is and is not. Otherwise nobody knows what they're supporting or opposing. Clicriffhard (talk) 02:12, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

This is off-topic for AfD, but just to give you a concrete example, aspects of female gender that are understood through Performativity theory would clearly belong here, and not in Woman. So would insights into legal gender in that weird terrain where gender-based marriage regulations - based on legal sex but potentially quite divorced from "biological sex" - would be in scope, where they relate to female gender. Newimpartial (talk) 02:19, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't think it's off-topic because it's a question about what the topic of this article is, which we obviously need to know to take a meaningful position, so I appreciate a bit more detail. That said, I'm not clear on what this refers to:

"So would insights into legal gender in that weird terrain where gender-based marriage regulations - based on legal sex but potentially quite divorced from "biological sex" - would be in scope, where they relate to female gender."

Could you give an example of where content would relate specifically to female legal gender, rather than more generally to legal gender? Just one example - I'm not asking you to sketch out the whole article.

I guess I'm also interested to know why you think female legal gender (aka female legal sex) is more of a piece with female gender identity than with female sex. Seems to me that it relates significantly to both and differs significantly from both. Clicriffhard (talk) 02:43, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

An example would be the (surprising number of) jurisdictions where a woman (cis or trans) can marry a cis or trans man but not a cis or trans woman. That is a relatively pure operation of gender, as opposed to sex. Newimpartial (talk) 02:56, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Yes, but are there any jurisdictions where that's particular to female legal gender/sex? In other words, are there any jurisdictions where people with female legal gender/sex can only marry people with male legal gender/sex, but people with male legal gender/sex can marry any adult they like? Genuine question - I think the answer is probably "no" but I'll be interested to know if I'm wrong. Clicriffhard (talk) 03:03, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Just to point out as well: that's an operation of legal gender/sex. It isn't an operation of biological sex but nor is it an operation of gender identity, except to the extent that both of those concepts feed into legal gender/sex. Clicriffhard (talk) 03:06, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

But "legal gender/sex" - insofar as it is a societal construct and therefore part of gender - is absolutely within the scope of Female (gender). That's part of what I mean when I point out that the topic is not limited to gender identity.

To your earlier point, I'm not sure whether there are actual jurisdictions where the law about women marrying (cis and trans) men differs from laws about men marrying (cis and trans) women. But there are certainly jurisdictions where sex acts are criminalized between men and (cis and trans) men that are not criminalized between women and (cis and trans) women. And those laws aren't based on biological sex in any way. Newimpartial (talk) 03:19, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

To the 1st para: my point is that by putting things like female gender identity and female legal gender/sex into the same article, you end up with a bit of a ragbag of concepts that are vaguely related to one another but no more so than they are to female sex. It's a bit of an artificial coalition, whereas an article specifically about female gender identity has much more clarity of purpose - and that is the article that I would prefer to be supporting here, because I think you're probably right that it isn't adequately covered by other articles.

To the 2nd para: yes, fair point about sex acts. I disagree that it isn't based on biological sex in any way (as legal gender/sex is typically determined by your perceived biological sex at birth unless and until certain conditions are met to vary it), but agree that you could reasonably put that info into an article that was specifically about male legal gender/sex or female legal gender/sex.

Apologies for claiming the last word, but I'm done for the night. Will check back with interest to see where this AFD ends up. Clicriffhard (talk) 03:38, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Re: an article specifically about female gender identity has much more clarity of purpose - to me, it is a higher priority to work through gender in all its forms, including the ways it is perfomaticely built out of bodies, and all the concepts like "legal sex" and "legal gender" that engage in social regulation of bodies. All of this social material lies on the "gender" side of the Sex and gender distinction, and we ought to be covering it for Female-gendered and Male-gendered (as well as Nonbinary-gendered) humans. Newimpartial (talk) 03:46, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

As a follow-up to my question about "what is this article about" above, here's another angle: The second sentence of WP:Article titles says this:

The title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles.

The first half of that sentence was the basis for my previous question (and I still don't know the answer, but let's set that aside for the moment). I followed with interest the discussion below, mostly between users Andrevan and Newimpartial, about why content presumed to be intended for "Female (gender)" wouldn't better be covered by any or all of five to ten existing articles. This inspired me to consider the second half of the sentence from article title policy: "...and distinguishes it from other articles". The discussion below seemed to address that, but without arriving at a conclusion; perhaps if others chime in, something will come of it.

But the situation we seem to find ourselves in now, is that we are deep into an Afd, with voting, rebuttals, and numerous interesting side-discussions going on about all sorts of stuff, and no closer to an agreement either on what the article is about, or how the title distinguishes the topic from other ones. Let's remember who we are writing for: our readers, sometimes schoolkids, who are mostly not editors. If we cannot even agree what the title means in discussion, what are the chances that a naive reader is going to know what it means? (If we could agree, we could write a solid lead sentence that would help define and explain the topic for our readers, but we're not there yet.) If we all have different ideas about the title, then what do the votes even mean? Does anyone have a strong feeling that we are coming closer to a consensus about what to do, here? Because I don't. I pity the closer. Mathglot (talk) 08:01, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

@Mathglot I think the current lead is getting closer:

Female gender pertains to characteristics that can be related to the social, psychological, cultural and behavioral experience of being a woman or girl, such as gender roles and/or gender identity, which may include but is also beyond female sex...

• It's a big onus to require that a lede be perfectly representative of the topic this early, especially when it's something that requires this level of care to detail and awareness of bias.
• Practically all articles are defined in relation to other articles. That's wikipedia. I agree with you that it's clearer in other cases when dictionaries lay it out for you, and that's why I started with the gender identity lede which didn't fully represent the topic. But it's often the case that one definition doesn't fully represent the depth of a topic.
• For example, the female sex article's lede:

Female (symbol: ♀) is the sex of an organism that produces the large non-motile ova (egg cells), the type of gamete (sex cell) that fuses with the male gamete during sexual reproduction.

Should female sex be merged into sex, ova, gamete, or sexual reproduction simply because it defines itself in relation to those topics? Clearly not. None of those articles could fully cover the topic. Similarly, neither gender identity, gender, woman, or gender role would fully cover the topic of female gender on their own.

• As you've pointed out, the question becomes "is there enough to say on female (gender) for it to be its own topic"? I think the answer is yes, but it hasn't been given a chance to develop. It would be a double standard to require that an article be fully developed from the beginning. Draft space is an option, but I fear that will scare away editors who fear another lengthy AfD.
• Lastly, the fact that multiple editors have suggested redirecting female gender to Trans Woman illustrates why this article would be a good addition to wikipedia. It fills a significant knowledge gap. The void century (talk) 16:15, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

The lede needn't be representative of the topic now (what's the topic again?), that can come later. (Actually, you can't have a perfect lede if there's no article to summarize.) Otoh, if one can't write a WP:LEADSENTENCE (needn't be perfect either, just comprehensible) that describes it in a way that people can understand and which circumscribes the topic, then nobody knows what should go in there; the current version still seems like a kitchen-sink sentence that reflects whatever anybody wants to see in it. One thing is for sure: this sentence completely upends my previous understanding of the title as being shorthand for Conflated usage of the term female to indicate a gender (which was the basis of my !vote). Now my understanding of the title (of rev. 17:13, 24 July) is that it's shorthand for What it feels like to be a girl or woman, in all its aspects; is that right? I wonder what others thought it was, when they voted. Mathglot (talk) 17:29, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

I interpret the topic as all social aspects relevant to being the determinate negation of male, not just the experiential aspects. Not all of gender power relations, for example, can be identified phenomenologically. Newimpartial (talk) 17:34, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

That sounds like a WP:COATRACKing farm, since "all social aspects relevant to being the determinate negation of male" does not appear to be a topic that is the subject of a bunch of reliable sources, but rather a topic you're trying to construct out of splicing-and-dicing source material. I.e., OR.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:07, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

• Draftify: I'm all for keeping an article like this one, but the current one is extremely half-baked. Let's make it a draft and then re-launch later once it's got some actual content in it. Loki (talk) 01:57, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  Lean Keep The article now has enough content in it to justify keeping it in main space, IMO. It's still not great and much too short for the topic at hand, but at least it's an article with sources instead of just a single paragraph. Loki (talk) 18:37, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

  Loki, you realize that "too short" is not a reason to delete (or draftify), and that "long enough" is not a reason to keep, right? There are valid articles consisting of nothing but a defining sentence and a couple of references to establish notability. Mathglot (talk) 19:41, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

  That page you linked me specifically states that it is not exhaustive. Furthermore, "a couple of references to establish notability" is the operative part of your sentence. This article didn't have those and now it does. Loki (talk) 20:25, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

  Notability is an attribute of "topics" not "articles". If it were the latter, no article could ever be deleted due to lack of Notability because all you would have to do would be to stuff a couple of references in it. Clearly not the case. The references now in the article do not establish notability of the topic, because as has been stated elsewhere, nobody seems to know, or at least agree, what the topic is. Mathglot (talk) 23:28, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

  That's a bit of an overstatement. I think that I agree with at least some of the people who think the article should be kept about what the subject of the article is. Vexations (talk) 02:25, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

  If it were the latter, no article could ever be deleted due to lack of Notability because all you would have to do would be to stuff a couple of references in it. Wait, what? The whole point of the notability guideline is that those references don't always exist, and it's extremely difficult to write an article with no references or only poor quality references.

  I'm convinced that, per the current state of the article, those references do exist and we just have to write a better article based on them. I also am very unconvinced by claims the topic is unclear. The topic of the article is extremely clear from the title: it is the gender "female", as opposed to the sex "female" or the gender or sex "male". Loki (talk) 14:54, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

  Did you also read the section on the psychological experience? One could write those phrases probably about anyone of the male or the female gender, a man or a woman. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 20:57, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

  Female gender roles may be associated with psychological stress and conflict. -> This is a claim requiring citation, and we do cite it. I would be surprised but not shocked if it was also true of male gender roles. Regardless, it would be informative either way.

  Psychological research began to include women participants in the 1950s and 1960s, -> Absolutely not true of men. Psychological research was being done on men before the 50s.

  with an increasing focus over time on gender roles and gender identity, as well as intersectional factors including poverty, class, racism, and education. -> This sure is pretty generic, and in a better article I'd definitely try to make it say more with fewer words, but I give new articles a lot of slack for awkward phrasings. Loki (talk) 15:00, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

  Your first quote is about gender roles, and the second is about women. So, it's just some sentences about other topics cobbled together. Crossroads ^-talk- 01:30, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

  WP:PLENTY is not a valid keep rationale.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:58, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

• Keep I just skimmed the huger amount of discussion on this but the only basis given for deletion was that it is a fork. The other article is a longer standing article about biological female. The gorillia in the living room is more recent initiatives to recognize gender as sometimes different than biological sex or independent of biological sex. Some initiatives there go to the extent of non-discussion of bilological sex when discussing gender. Rather than having the dicotomy and endless political battles regarding downplaying biological sex at the the article based on this, this article has a subject which allows for covergae it as a gender, where such can be different than biological sex, and gender being the common term in sources and elsewhere where identity is different than or independent of biologial sex. Or, to put it another way, this a term-oriented article, a term which can be independent of biological sex. North8000 (talk) 02:38, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
• Delete, problematic at best.Merge/redirect to gender, gender role, femininity, sociology of gender, social construction of gender, legal gender. Cover [added: the different aspects comprehensively] in female, woman, girl, femininity, X chromosome, Grammatical_gender#Gender_contrasts, etc. Andrevan@ 02:38, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  Anyone proposing to cover Female (gender) in X chromosome is either ignorant or trolling; either away, this isn't a !vote to count towards consensus. Newimpartial (talk) 02:42, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  Feel free to elaborate, isn't having an X chromosome one aspect of femaleness? Was not intending to troll. Feel free to explain why I shouldn't write that. I'm striking it in the meantime. Also, I think I mis-clarified, I didn't mean to cover "female (gender)" in "X chromosome," that would be "female (biological sex)" right? Anyway, my point is that we have enough articles to cover (I think) the different types and meanings of female which are valid. I was not trying to offend. Andrevan@ 02:46, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  The whole point of an article on female (gender) is that it's not female (sex). But chromosomes are an aspect of sex and notably not an aspect of gender. So you must have been, at minimum, ignorant of the previous discussion. Loki (talk) 02:51, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  I think I was just unclear as to what I meant. My point is that we have many articles for all the different meanings and contexts of "female" and not that we should cover female (gender) in X chromosome. I apologize for mis-phrasing. Andrevan@ 02:53, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  Because we are discussing Gender, a concept that includes the social aspects of being female (in this case) but not the fundamentals of biology - except I suppose for efforts to discipline gender through biological techniques, as found in the history of women's athletics, but even there chromosomes aren't generally deployed. Newimpartial (talk) 02:53, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  Wouldn't the social aspects of being female be covered in woman, femininity (which is redirected from female gender role), gender role, etc? Andrevan@ 02:56, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  The OWNers of Woman have been quite clear over time about two things: (1) biological content about females that is specific to adult humans is in-scope for that article and (2) the remainder of that article is mostly for topics where the sources don't consistently distinguish sex from gender.

  Topics that are about female gender, strictly speaking, have therefore been largely excluded from that article. This would give that sourced content a home. Newimpartial (talk) 03:00, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  Nobody on Wikipedia WP:OWNs content, so you're confusing me, are you making a serious argument or being sarcastic? Either way, I'm not convinced. You haven't explained why this content couldn't be femininity, gender role, gender identity, sociology of gender, social construction of gender, trans woman, or another article. I don't agree there should be a new separate article called female (gender), it's more confusing than necessary. That's my opinion, it counts, it's valid, and we may continue to discuss it if you have new arguments or information, and I will change my view if I think it makes sense. Andrevan@ 03:05, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  On Wikipedia "OWNERS" is a way of talking about the key stakeholders of particular article who have self-assigned veto power over its content. If you look at the WP:BRD process as written, for example, it is intended to identify and then engage in dialogue with such stakeholders (not called "owners" in that instance, presumably out of politeness).

  For years we have had intractable problems with the lead sections of Trans woman, Woman and Female because the owners of Female insist that it is essentially a biology article, the owners of Woman insist that it not really distinguish sex from gender, but Trans woman follows its sources and explains aspects of its topic in terms of gender, in ways that are not at all specific to the literature on trans people but which the Woman and Female articles exclude. This sourced content would be in scope for Female (gender). Newimpartial (talk) 03:14, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  "Key stakeholders" do not have "veto power" over article content, and if you actually read WP:OWN you would see that it is asking, perhaps aspirationally for collective ownership of content. I understand there may be institutional issues or problematic contributors. I've been on Wikipedia for many years. I don't agree with your read of policy or your article idea. And your WP:BLUDGEON isn't convincing me that you have Wikipedia's interest in mind. There might be a longstanding WP:CONSENSUS, consensus can change, but so far I am not hearing an argument that addresses the content issue. If there are users gatekeeping and doing mean stuff on article talk pages, that is a behavioral issue, it doesn't pertain to the content decisions. Andrevan@ 03:17, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  To WP:AGF to the absolute max, you do not appear to be familiar either with the issues or with typical behaviour in the GENSEX WP:ACDS area. Newimpartial (talk) 03:22, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  I asked you simply why you couldn't address this in femininity, gender role, gender identity, sociology of gender, social construction of gender, you said there were contributors who were acting like they own the article. I may agree with you about those contributors, that isn't answering the question though. You claim you are AGF and yet you aren't, from your comments and qualifications. Andrevan@ 03:24, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  I answered what I took to be your most urgent question, namely "why can't this content be in Female or Woman?" As far as why we can't rely on other, potentially overlapping articles for coverage, I answered that here and also addressed the issue here. I answered "can't Femininity cover this" on the Article Talk page here. You don't have to agree with (or even understand) my attempts to answer, but you can't in good conscience accuse me of not having tried. Newimpartial (talk) 03:39, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  I agree with your logic on "supersets and subsets" but there is also a principle of "disambiguation" "simplicity" and "clarity." I am not accusing you of not having tried to answer, I am attempting to engage in good faith, and if I thought that there was some content that really could not be covered in the existing articles, I would be open to changing my view. So far I believe that there is no content that doesn't seem to have a place in one of the other more or less specific article titles, and it's more confusing to have a separate article with the parenthetical. It is purely a stylistic, content, reliable source question. If there is a legitimate behavioral beef with bullying users throwing their weight around, that should be addressed at the ArbCom or through Trust & Safety and other dispute resolution process. If you have a substantive, content or source-based, logical argument which also addresses the existing article scope comprehensively, I am 100% open to changing the !vote. FWIW I am ideologically quite supportive of any kind of queer or trans rights question, so I'm not in any way trying to question the value of covering this accurately, some kludgy phrasing nonwithstanding. Andrevan@ 03:49, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  To make the most elementary point simply: there is literally no content at all in Women's association football that could not be covered in Association football or in Women's sports. And yet, Women's association football is a useful article - for essentially the same reasons, I suspect, as Female (gender). Newimpartial (talk) 03:54, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  That metaphor isn't landing for me. I need an example of something which can be talked about in female (gender) but not in gender role, femininity, sociology of gender, social construction of gender, etc. or how that makes it clearer or easier to understand for readers. You mentioned something about "legal gender" above, I think I need a different example, because that still feels like a section in a different article. It's a question of language, the principle of common and clear naming, and how Wikipedia works and I again, am open on it but this is not convincing me. I think we should avoid unnecessary parentheticals when they can be spelled out. For example I prefer female gender, female gender role, female construction of gender, female legal gender, etc. Andrevan@ 04:00, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

The first two links you gave were redirects and the next two were redlinks. I have already explained elsewhere how this article's scope is much broader than gender expression or gender roles (femininity), since it also includes gender as a social structure, and gender identity. I have no preference between Female (gender) and Female gender, but I have a very wrong preference for viable articles - which Female gender is and Female (legal sex/gender) emphatically is not. Newimpartial (talk) 04:08, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

You missed the point of my redlinks (which I just turned into redirects). There are currently articles at locations like social construction of gender, legal gender, gender role, sociology of gender, as well as masculinity and femininity. I currently think that covers a lot of stuff. Why should we have an article called female (gender)? And does that mean we'll also make a male (gender), nonbinary (gender), asexual (gender), intersex (gender), other (gender), hermaphrodite (gender)? Or are some of those genders and some are sexes? Either way, I think if we do move the existing articles, you should answer for where the existing content goes, and what new content doesn't have a place in social construction of gender, gender identity, etc. Andrevan@ 04:21, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Wanna see my "red" link? InedibleHulk (talk) 04:28, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

That seems pretty unhelpful at best, @InedibleHulk, but thank you for the {`{od}`} tag. Andrevan@ 04:37, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

You're welcome. InedibleHulk (talk) 04:47, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

• Redirect to Gender Like male and female volleyball players, male and female genders are both just genders, best discussed together (if not similarly). InedibleHulk (talk) 04:44, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
• Delete, mostly per the well-reasoned explanation given by Crossroads. There’s nothing that could be placed in this article that wouldn’t make more sense in woman, female, or femininity; the sole non-redundant purpose of this article is to create a WP:POVFORK of material found to be unsuitable by discussion/consensus in those articles. Endwise (talk) 08:37, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
• Send to draft space and put it through AfC review process when it's more substantial - after a day and a half(!), the article looks like this, which hardly allows anyone to make an informed decision.  Tewdar  09:59, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  Update - not that I want to minimize Beccaynr's efforts to improve the article here, but at the moment, it just looks like the woman article with most of the biology missing. Is that what people imagine the article should be?  Tewdar  18:04, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  I think the woman article would benefit from some expansion according to independent and reliable sources, and merging some of the gender-related content to this article could also help both articles. Beccaynr (talk) 18:22, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

• Delete or send to draft space and let them work a bit on the article if they say it has so many sources. If anyone looks for information on gender or female and gets presented this version (of the 23rd of July), or this {28 of July} I guess it won't add to the reputation of Wikipedia as an encyclopedia, when at the same time we have much better expanded articles on female, woman, feminity and gender.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 10:49, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

The vote above has been adapted on the 28th of July. My conclusion is that the article in discussion attempts to describe women under the title female gender.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 03:46, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

I want to reconfirm my delete vote because I further down had the idea that maybe Female Human would be a name for the article as it might generate more search results. After reading the discussion further I believe Female Gender is a POVFORK (Point of View Fork) of either Woman or Feminity. If I google Female gender, articles on woman are the result. Newspapers do not report on the Female Gender strike, but on the women strike, they do not report on female gender voting rights, but on women's voter rights, they do also report on the female gender going to school, but report on young women and girls {or gender neutral students} going to school. What is currently treated in the article is on women, girls, feminity, gender or gender expression all already existing articles. And most of the sources are inaccessible to the average reader. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 23:49, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

• Comment I began an expansion of the article [6], and I think some of the discussion above related to the many wikilinks where related general topics appear helps demonstrate the viability of this article, and how it can be further developed with a specific focus on female gender, and serve as a way to help readers find further relevant material. I think the question of why can't this topic be covered in other articles is answered by how many other general articles exist, and how this article can be more than the sum of its parts by offering a specific focus on the female gender. Beccaynr (talk) 18:15, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  Thanks, well, I've been reading it a bit and the difference between the female gender and the woman is a bit missing and if the female gender is associated with psychological stress and conflict, does this only concern the ones who pertain to the female gender and excludes women and the ones who pertain to the male gender? I am more and more leaning to delete per Andrevan who showed Female gender role etc. redirects to Femininity. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 19:32, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  The redirect of female gender role to femininity was an inspiration for me to begin an expansion, because the RS indicate there is much more that can be developed. A redirect that appears to run several decades behind the RS seems to help emphasize the value of this article and what it can do to add encyclopedic content to complex topics. The woman article is missing RS-supported content that is distinctly related to gender, and the woman article has content that can be merged with this article. Based on the sources, this article appears to be a reasonable WP:SPINOFF that can also help improve the woman article. Beccaynr (talk) 19:41, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  also further confusion likely to follow with a possible attempt to conflate female (gender) with femininity. This article, as it stands, should not be in main space. Acousmana 19:51, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  And now it's even more obviously a WP:POVFORK with a preposterous statement of claimed fact right in the lead like Cultural expectations are more commonly used to perceive gender because biological characteristics, such as genitalia, are not typically displayed in public. So I guess sexual dimorphism and Secondary sex characteristic#In humans don't exist, and neither do tomboys, all because of this cherry-picked source, and never mind all the actual science on how humans recognize male and female. Crossroads ^-talk- 20:57, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  That statement is from an RS, along with other reliable sources in the article, that discuss the sociocultural constructions. This is one of the ways that this article can help improve the woman article, because the RS clarify what the female gender means for humans. Beccaynr (talk) 21:03, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  And yet numerous RS attest that those other things I mentioned exist. Do you really believe that humans are unable to perceive secondary sex characteristics? Why do trans people medically transition then? Or do you admit that this is cherry-picked and/or misleadingly presented? I checked the source, by the way, and it seems to just mention genitals and "cultural genitals", totally ignoring other biological characteristics, unlike your text cited to it. Crossroads ^-talk- 21:09, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  It is not cherry-picked and I have no intention of creating a misleading presentation of the information. The source discusses the biological characteristic of genitalia, and the sentence can be slightly tweaked to make that more clear. And according to the various RS, human perception of gender is influenced by cultural and social factors - that we do not typically view genitalia helps emphasize that point. I had hoped to work more on this article, but got distracted from my flow by an editor deleting content while I was working and after I asked them to allow me some time to work on the article. It can be challenging to expand an article during an AfD, and more so during an AfD such as this, but I think the work I have done helps demonstrate some of the limitations in the woman article that can be addressed beneficially by the existence and further development of this article. Beccaynr (talk) 21:24, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  "That statement is from an RS," that statement comes from a book dealing specifically with Sexual Deviance & Society. The full text reads: "For example, for the most part, genitalia are hidden from public view yet we continue to see and do gender (even without seeing and exposing our genitals). In this way, gender attribution is based on 'cultural genitals' whereby an individual’s masculine or feminine performances and displays dictate gender and it is only a presumption that such behaviours “match” an individual’s sex assigned at birth (Kessler and McKenna 1978:153).Cultural genitalia, then, is key to understanding gender norms and, conversely, gender deviance.

  If it's "key to understanding gender norms" where is our article on 'cultural genitalia'? Perhaps we need one? Acousmana 21:30, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  You are not quoting the full text. Beccaynr (talk) 21:32, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  Also, there's nothing about this specific to female gender at all. It's about just gender and is pure filler. The article is becoming a dumping ground of random stuff all covered at or belonging in existing articles, but with all the more balanced contextual material from those articles excised. Crossroads ^-talk- 21:36, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  The lead has been expanded into an overview that can help develop an outline for the subtopics covered in the article, with a clear focus on female gender. It is obviously not just about gender, and it is not "pure filler" because it is sourced to RS and links to a variety of related articles. This is a distinct topic that is not adequately covered as a whole across the many other articles noted in this discussion, and its existence can help improve encyclopedic coverage of the topic generally and specifically. Beccaynr (talk) 21:48, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  "This is a distinct topic": why then are we citing scholarly work on Sexual Deviance & Society rather than scholarly publications that deal explicitly - not tangentially - with female (gender)? Are we going to construct this by going around picking a bit here, a bit there, anything that that happens to fit the theme 'female (gender)'? Can we instead consult key texts, definitive texts, publications that very clearly centre on the matter we are attempt to write about? Acousmana 21:59, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  Maybe it would be best to discuss this on the article Talk page, in a collaborative and civil manner. The text is a scholarly publication, that cites definitive texts, and this is a detail related to the article development, which I would like to continue, but hopefully with more productive discussion than has currently happened. Thanks, Beccaynr (talk) 22:18, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

  there is no incivility, and discussion has taken place on the aticle talk page, but you keep fudging. You also state that you lack expertise and that the content you are adding is a result of your "research" on the topic. This is worrying, and it's why we are ending up with inaccurate, decontextualised, citing. Random sampling from a scattering of tagentially related sources is not a coherent strategy in dealing with a topic that you yourself have admitted is "complex" Acousmana 15:33, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

  Crossroads: to my knowledge, nobody - neither Judith Butler, nor the source cited here, nor anyone else - disputes that secondary sexual characteristics exist. There is, however, a debate within RS about how we perceive, code and recode gender, and your apparent supposition that this question has already been answered by Science! and that more phenomenological and performative approaches have nothing to contribute - well, I don't think it is a perspective well-supported by the literature on female gender, let's put it that way. Newimpartial (talk) 23:17, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

• Delete or draftify. Previously I asked why this article was needed and what content would fit into this article that wouldn't fit into other articles. That question was never adequately answered, that is it doesn't appear that editors who are in favor of this topic could clearly articulate why it was needed. Thus I would say it shouldn't currently exist in article space. In draft form editor would get a chance to sort things out. However, I think the draft article would need to answer the same question before being promoted to article space. Springee (talk) 01:16, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

  What was unclear to you about @Newimpartial's and others' answers to your question? There seemed to be some clear syntheses of the topic in that discussion. The void century (talk) 01:21, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

• Draftify and improve. Later we can decide whether the material should have its own article (very likely) or be incorporated elsewhere. Johnbod (talk) 17:33, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
• Delete this article appears to be a wp:POVFORK to me.

I keep hearing talk about trying to make a more human centric article on females or trying to use a non-biological definition of female. But here’s the problem with that. The term female is literally a biological term and even sources that talk about this topic from a sociological or non-biological view treat female as a biology term.

Almost all dictionaries define a female as an organism that can produce ovum (or at least they define female with regards to their reproductive role).

Also female (gender) clearly goes against WP:NOR. For example, I read the first two sources cited in the lead, and they don’t define female gender at all and they clearly don't say Female gender pertains to characteristics that emerge from the social, psychological, cultural and behavioral experience of being a woman or girl, such as gender roles and/or gender identity.CycoMa1 (talk) 21:40, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

The exact phrase "female gender" is used in Lee(2005) several times, including this sentence: "Researchers have pointed out that the African American female gender role ..." which I'm inclined to interpret as that even a subtopic of this article is a subject of academic research. Vexations (talk) 22:00, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

@Vexations: Lee(2005) is clearly talking about gender roles for females. They aren’t defining females.CycoMa1 (talk) 22:42, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

CycoMa1 beat me to it; I was about to say the same thing. In other words, you're parsing it wrong: this is about (female (gender role)), not ((female gender) role). Mathglot (talk) 22:45, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

But female (gender role) is part of the topic female (gender), as is female (gender identity). Newimpartial (talk) 23:21, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

They (are arguing) semantics because they can't argue with the substance of the sources.

Here's a hypothetical example:

Sentence one: A major is a specialization in a particular subject at college or university, such as psychology, medicine, or law.

Sentence two: A psychology major is a specialization in the study of human behavior at college or university.

You won't find the term psychology major defined exactly that way in any sources, but if you read the substance of sources, you'd conclude that's what a psychology major is, and you'd conclude that psychology majors are a distinct topic with that definition. The void century (talk) 00:02, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Nonsense. You can find in under 5 seconds various sources describing psychology major, as such, without any need for the OR you want to encourage. [7][8][9][10][11], etc., etc.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:41, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

All of those sources describe psychology majors. None of them use my wording:

a psychology major is a specialization in the study of human behavior at college or university

But if you read those sources, and you know the definition of major, you know that my above definition is correct. The void century (talk) 04:04, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Wow, missing the point and making my point for me both at once? We are here to read sources and write material based on them, not write material that suits one's own preferences/perceptions and hope to bend sources to support one's viewpoint.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:11, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't think you're proving what you think. And btw, that meaning for the word bend is not the primary definition in any dictionary. Your accusation of OR is off the wall. Do you know what that means? The void century (talk) 04:30, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

PS: I see someone else alrelady addressed this problem in your reasoning and approach [12] so this is starting to seem like a WP:IDONTGETIT problem.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:21, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Different conversation. And it was an accurate representation of the source, in my humble view. Copying something word for word is WP:CV. That editor didn't like my wording because of what they viewed as semantic mismatch between the terms female and woman/girl, which are synonymous. Female humans are women and girls. The void century (talk) 04:40, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

[sigh] I guess if you show me three times in a row that you just won't get it, I should believe it and move on.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:02, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

times in a row is an analogy too. You really enjoy using analogies for someone who believes in accuracy. I guess if you show me three times that you're a topic-discussed-in-thousands-of-reliable-sources-but-rarely-explicitly-defined, I should believe it and move on. Maybe try being civil and see if people react differently. [sigh] The void century (talk) 05:27, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Re: The term female is literally a biological term and even sources that talk about this topic from a sociological or non-biological view treat female as a biology term - this is an inaccurate statement, according to the available sources. It also represents a misunderstanding of the content of Female (gender). If the article were intended to answer the question, is "female" (for humans) to be defined by biology or by gender? then an article arguing one side of this question would fail WP:NPOV. Apparently you, like several other editors who have voted above, think the answer from the sources is, "female (for humans) is defined by biology". But in reality, that is only one answer that is presented within reliable sources, wheread the preponderant view of the BALANCE of sources as a whole is, "female (for humans) is sometimes based on biology and sometimes on gender", and there is a large corpus of high-quality sources that elaborate what "female gender" means and what is known about it.

It would be a mistake to interpret these sources as though they were primarily engaged in a dispute with other sources that define female (for humans) in relation to biology. What is important about these sources is that they reflect probably the most important knowledge we have about binary gender; it would therefore be ridiculous to exclude them from the encyclopaeia, but the Science! advocates at Female and the OWNers of Woman have consistently maintained that what we know about gender and gender identity, apart from "sex", is not important to those articles. Treating these understandings of human existence as a "POVFORK" of biology is a simple misunderstanding of the literature and of NPOV policy all at once. Newimpartial (talk) 22:21, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

have consistently maintained that what we know about gender and gender identity, apart from "sex", is not important to those articles. This is a strawman and a falsehood. Crossroads ^-talk- 02:43, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

It is very easy to demonstrate that my statement is accurate; so as not to Gish gallop, I'll start by pointing to CaptianEek's move of the gender section to be internal to the species hierarchy and PyritePro's comment on Talk:Woman The problem with the direct association between woman and gender-identity, is that woman simply doesn't mean "an adult human with a female gender identity".... If there is a problem with the wiki-internal logic that "women are humans that produces eggs", it should be addressed at Female, not here.[13] Both of these moves seem to indicate pretty clearly that "gender" is considered to be of secondary or tertiary relevance to these articles, at best (as do some of your own efforts to minimize explicit mention of gender in the lede. Newimpartial (talk) 12:31, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

So, a single text move (not deletion) by CaptainEek, which is totally fine since humans are in fact a species, and a comment from a user who hasn't edited since early February. This does not establish what you are claiming, nor justify a WP:POV fork. Crossroads ^-talk- 01:49, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

What the first source says:

• Gender: Psychological, social, cultural, and behavioral characteristics associated with being female or male. Gender is defined by one’s gender identity and learned gender role.
• Sex is biological in nature and gender is sociocultural in nature.
• Women are also often victims of gender stratification, or the hierarchical organization of a society in such a way that members of one gender have more access to wealth, prestige, and power than do the members of the other gender.
• there is no one set of biologically-determined behavioral characteristics that necessarily define an individual who is male or female. Instead, gender roles and behaviors result from processes of socialization.
• our understanding of what gender is and what it means to behave as a member of a specific gender develops through our social interactions in a particular culture. Throughout time, different cultures have conceived of gender in various ways, providing evidence that gender is not biologically, but rather socially defined
• People are not born knowing how to act as members of a particular gender. Rather, they learn how to act through their interactions with other members of the culture.
• For instance, gender as a cultural product is defined by a set of culturally-appropriate beliefs about what gender is, how members of a gender behave and must consequently be treated.

Should we change title of the article to the gender associated with being female or Psychological, social, cultural, and behavioral characteristics associated with being female. Would that make it less WP:ORIGINAL? The void century (talk) 22:51, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

• Delete Per WP:POVFORK and for the many reasons already expressed.Eccekevin (talk) 00:04, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
• PSA - Using ref tags on discussion pages creates unnecessary clutter and formatting confusion. Just link to the source. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 02:52, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

  I moved the {{reflist-talk}} to the bottom.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:01, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

• Isn't language fun? This is a tough call, and a lot to read through. Going to talk through it on the merits, ignoring the finger pointing/aspersions/assumptions of bad faith. It's uncontroversial at this point to say that biological sex can be distinguished from gender, especially when it comes to humans. Let's start at the lower level, with articles pertaining specifically to humans. It seems entirely reasonable (and even obvious) that we should have separate articles on [female humans] (the biological article), and [female gender among humans] (the social, etc. article). Even if the term "female" and "woman" are complicated, fraught, overlapping, changing, etc., we should still have those two things covered separately. Then, for the higher-level articles, we should obviously have an article on [female sex] but we don't, as far as I know, need an article covering non-human gender. Ok, so looking at the state of our current articles, female is doing double duty as covering biological sex in all animals, but also gender in just humans. Woman is also doing double duty, covering biological sex and gender. My sense is that gender should be removed from female beyond a single line, and [female gender in humans] should be spun out of the woman article and summarized. That seems to be the article we're talking about now, more or less, so I'm currently leaning a hesitant keep. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 03:18, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

  Why would not merging the salvageable material to Gender or Gender identity suffice? What about this sliver of the broader topic mandates that it be given a separate article? And even if we did need one, why would this one be it, given all the issues people have raised with it? On a re-read of your rationale, it all seems to be covered by various points of WP:AADD.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:15, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

  Why would not merging the salvageable material to Gender or Gender identity suffice? It just strikes me as self-evident that there are a lot (an understatement) of sources about female gender, sufficient to have a stand-alone article. And even if we did need one, why would this one be it, given all the issues people have raised with it? I see this one has been stubified. I'm certainly not opposed to Draftifying, either. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 10:20, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

  Woman has both biological and gender-related aspects, per the variety of reliable sources on the topic of women. That's not "double duty", that's the nature of the topic. It sounds like you are proposing that woman would be almost entirely about biology, which I can't imagine was the goal of the people who created this fork. Crossroads ^-talk- 05:06, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

  I'm not really thinking about the goal of whoever created this. Just going based on the topic and my sense of the sourcing vs. current organization in Wikipedia. The extent to which gender should remain in woman should indeed be a conversation for that talk page, but unless it's going to be both female biological sex and female gender, which it doesn't seem to be trying to do, then it seems to me there's room for another article. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 10:20, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

  I may be misunderstanding you here, but the woman article is absolutely about both biological sex and female gender. It's packed full of stuff that only relates to gender. Again, perhaps I'm misunderstanding you here, but this is not my impression of the article.  Tewdar  14:44, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

  While my perception agrees with yours that the Woman article contains content that is specific to gender, other editors have prominently denied this. Newimpartial (talk) 15:50, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

  At times, it appears that articles in this topic area are purposely designed so that different groups of editors can have opposite interpretations of the same article.  Tewdar  16:08, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

• Delete or Merge because this is a developing area of discourse which is currently in a state of flux, and as such an encyclopedic article should not be "taking sides" by presenting one side of an ongoing discussion/debate as a representation of the reality. Instead, the content of this page belongs in Gender Identity, which could be expanded as needed to accommodate additions and/or future developments. Chagropango (talk) 16:30, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
• Keep, but remember to include possibly neutral/negative discussion of the term in the article. For some reason, that's only ever mentioned here, in the back alleys, but the very existence of negativity is a critical factor in the neutrality of the article.~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 19:19, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

  @AirshipJungleman29: are you defending an article that has no idea what it’s about and clearly is full of original research.CycoMa1 (talk) 04:08, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

• Redirect to Female Female (disambiguation): there may be a better way to properly contain different information on female sex and gender than at the pages Female, Woman, Girl, Cisgender, Trans woman, Gender, Sex etc. as currently arranged, but creation of a new article titled Female (gender) is not it. Discussions of splits, merges and moving sections from one article to another should be the process by which improvement takes place. There happens to be an, ahem, terf war underlying much of this discussion, which is unfortunate to see but hardly surprising. It does not help for editors to see their purpose in this topic area as furthering transgender liberation, but what is really unacceptable are the barbed, unpleasant and misinformed comments that make this topic area hostile to LGBT people. — Bilorv (talk) 20:08, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

  The article Female discusses the sex of an organisms. You're proposing to redirect a title that is about gender, not sex and (female) humans, not organisms to an article that is about sex, not gender and organisms, not humans. If someone wanted to read about the subject topic by searching for some combination of female+gender, in what way is that an appropriate target for a redirect to help them find what they were looking for? Vexations (talk) 21:50, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

  @Vexations: my thinking when I made that suggestion was that the content at Female was wrong and should contain information on female+gender. For the time being, however, I've changed my comment to recommend Female (disambiguation) as a better target, particularly as a consensus is emerging at Talk:Female for the article to be primarily about sex (albeit a consensus influenced by some rather strange and incorrect ideas). — Bilorv (talk) 16:05, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

  But if Female (gender) is deleted or redirected, Female (disambiguation) will no longer contain an appropriate target, within the links provided. Newimpartial (talk) 16:10, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

  It would just be like it was before an edit on 23 July during the AfD, with appropriate targets gender, woman, girl, and femininity. Seems good to me. Crossroads ^-talk- 16:19, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

  Two links that treat part of the topic on relation to another topic (woman and girl), one link that treats the conceptual system of which the topic is a part (gender), and one link at treats a small subset of the topic (femininity)? That doesn't seem ideal. Newimpartial (talk) 16:22, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

  Female should be entirely about sex, not just primarily. Information about gender, connectors, and rhyme-schemes is out-of-scope for that article. What are these rather strange and incorrect ideas you speak of?  Tewdar  18:11, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

  Can we try to stay on topic please? This AfD is already sprawling. We can discuss other articles as potential merge or redirect targets but we should not be advocating for broader changes to other articles here. They all have Talk pages where that discussion can occur if (re)opening cans of worms is anybody's thing. DanielRigal (talk) 18:39, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

  Well, it sort-of is on topic. If female is about gender as well as sex (it isn't), there is no need for a separate female (gender) article, really.  Tewdar  20:12, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

• Comment It appears some editors are going against WP:GOODFAITH and I keep seeing others say certain editors are going against WP:CIVIL. Also, I don’t wanna say anyone is bludgeoning the process but scrolling through this discussion it appears some editors are bludgeoning the process. If we all don’t chill out a bit we’re all gonna be pulled into a long ANI over this.CycoMa1 (talk) 00:31, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

  Seems like a pretty standard discussion to me. I don't think anyone's going to AN/I over this.  Tewdar  08:06, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

• Keep. Is it too flippant to say it passes GNG? There are uncountable reliable sources about female, the human gender, that would be undue to summarize in an article that is explicitly about the female sex in all species. This reasonable argument has been used to exclude reliably sourced content from Female. Woman and Girl can hold much, but not all, of this content, as there are RS that discuss all female gendered people regardless of age. I don't think the article is in great shape right now, but AfD is not cleanup, and the article was actively being improved when it was nominated for deletion. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 18:37, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

  Woman and Girl can hold much, but not all, of this content, as there are RS that discuss all female gendered people regardless of age.

  If the articles girl and woman being too age-specific is an issue then this article (at least currently) clearly doesn’t fix that issue.

  If the problem was based on an article being age-specific then it would be ideal to create an article titled human female. This article is merely a mess of original research and cherry-picked sources.CycoMa1 (talk) 19:22, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

  But Woman and Girl consist overelmingly of content that is either about biology or where biology and gender can't be distinguished in the sources. If Human female were an article, it would presumably represent the same mix. Where would you recommend that content about Female gender - about gender that is specific to the female position in Gender binary - should be located? The whole reason this article was created, IMO, is because of sustained attempts over the years to exclude this sourced content from other article. Newimpartial (talk) 19:29, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

  I counted the sources at woman and the majority of the sources have nothing to do with biology and that goes the same for girl. CycoMa1 (talk) 19:54, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

  Given how many of the sources at Woman address medical content, I question the accuracy of your count. Newimpartial (talk) 20:37, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

  Also, are you no longer under a topic ban concerning medical content, broadly construed? Newimpartial (talk) 20:39, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

  I didn’t even comment or edit anything on that topic by the way. Neither of those are articles are in any medical WikiProject. I didn’t even click on the medical sources for either of those articles.CycoMa1 (talk) 20:46, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

  Then I don't see any way you could have produced an accurate count.

  Also, since Woman contains major sections of medical information and since, as far as I know, your topic ban is not limited to editing articles but also includes discussing them, I don't see how can participate in this discussion in the way you have without violating the topic ban. You have essentially argued that the content of the article at AfD is covered by articles with medical content, but the boundary between "biological sex" (the typical framing for female-relates health content) and gender is at the heart of this AfD - you shouldn't be commenting on that. Newimpartial (talk) 20:54, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

  I didn’t even read any of the sources okay. Plus my count wasn’t even accurate. Like I purposely skipped over like 4 major sections at Woman because I knew they would go against my topic ban.CycoMa1 (talk) 21:01, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

  But anyway just looking at the references themselves you can clearly tell what is biological source and what isn’t. Like the history section, clothing section, women in politics section, religion section, and culture section at Women clearly have nothing to do with biology.CycoMa1 (talk) 20:52, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

  Are you counting sources or sections? And are you unaware of the interpretation - seemingly held by most of the editors at Talk:Woman - that most of these sections concern both sex and gender (and don't make the distinction)? Newimpartial (talk) 20:56, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

I'll add an argument I have not seen yet, so I give it a try. I thought of an article that better covers what the keep camp says, and came up with the Female Human. The article already existed and is currently a redirect of Woman. Out of the redirect could be created an article. In the female human enters the girl and the woman and specifically covers the humans which at female is not the case. Female human is also a rather well known title among the global population other than female gender.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 21:04, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

But would there be a reason to restrict that article to gender-specific content? Newimpartial (talk) 21:22, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

This is for the ones who create the article to answer. But the current article Female Gender is mainly on women and girls. I see Female gender as an equivalent for female human but which is not very well known and not very often used by scholars (yet). They do not say and then the ones of the female gender go to school, they say girls go to school. Or the Female gender strike is also not well known, (I've not yet read about it) but the women strike is well known. Female Gender is a POVFORK.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 22:06, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

If the Female (gender) article were constructed by taking the material relevant to Woman (or "Human female"), misinterpreting the sources as though they were talking only about gender and then writing on that basis, that would be a POVFORK.

But that isn't what the current (short) article is, and that isn't what anyone is proposing to do. The point is to assemble the reliably sourced content about the female side of the Gender binary and only that content. As an example, this RS about gender in Canada contains sections that are specific to women and are framed in terms of gender (Women/Pay Equity and Distribution of Domestic Work; there is also a "Boy Crisis" section on education that would be relevant to Male (gender)). Currently Wikipedia has no home for the content specific to male or to female gender, which seems absurd given the article-level treatment of just about any other conceptual system or dimension of human experience. Newimpartial (talk) 23:15, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

This source is obviously speaking about women and hence belongs in that article. It uses the word "woman"! And your claim that the interpretation - seemingly held by most of the editors at Talk:Woman - that most of these sections concern both sex and gender is completely false and you should stop making it. The sections that CycoMa1 named and inexplicably crossed out are indeed not about biology but about gender. Crossroads ^-talk- 23:37, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

It is speaking about women and is specifically discussing gender. You have maintained with admirable consistency that Woman is not about defining sex or gender, or for talking about the sex-gender distinction. We go by the reliable sources. Any perceived inconsistencies in those are theirs to work out, not ours.[14] You keep making the argument on that Talk page that because 99% of AFAB people have a female gender identity, that therefore we don't need to include sources in Woman that distinguish between sex and gender, or that use gender rather than sex as an explanatory concept. But that means there isn't any place in Woman to talk about aspects that arise specifically from gender, as opposed to sex, doesn't it? It seems that you have created a Catch-22 for editors who don't share your preconceptions (which is why you keep making irrelevant comments about Female (gender) association football - seemingly a willful effort to avoid the point of a rather straightforward analogy). Newimpartial (talk) 23:57, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Your attempt to quote mine me won't work because everything you accuse me of after that quote is a strawman. I never said anything about excluding stuff from woman that was solely related to gender. Crossroads ^-talk- 00:13, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

How is your repeated assistance that material about the distinction between female sex and female gender is off-topic for Woman anything other than excluding stuff ... that was solely related to gender? As far as the sections that you are now saying are about gender, you have been maintaining for at least two years that they are about a population where sex and gender overlap for 99% of individuals, so therefore the distinction between sex and gender isn't relevant. How has your position changed? I am very surprised to see you now citing these sections as being about gender, since you had previously essentially toed the Flyer22 line that the content of Woman was either sex-specific, or sex overlapping with gender, but never specific to gender. Newimpartial (talk) 00:24, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Regarding your first sentence question, those are two different things. The rest is yet again a strawman. Crossroads ^-talk- 04:04, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Since I have been accused of creating a STRAWMAN, I will link a diff of Flyer22's influential argument about the sections of Woman then titled Culture and gender roles, Clothing, fashion and dress codes, Religion, and Education, that All of those topics relate to sex/are relevant to biology. Newimpartial (talk) 15:49, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

inexplicably crossed out Per the edit summaries by CycoMa it looks like it's related to his topic ban. Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:35, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

In any case, I don't think he did anything wrong because determining what part of an article is about gender and what part about sex isn't a medical matter. Crossroads ^-talk- 01:48, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

You are not an editor to be relied on, then, to interpret broadly construed. Newimpartial (talk) 01:56, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

At least a third of Woman; most of the Biology, entirety of Health, and the Reproductive rights sections, contain content CycoMa cannot discuss on enwiki because of how we define "broadly construed" with relation to topic bans due to the inherent overlap between biology and medicine. It's impossible to do an accurate survey of that article's sources when there are huge swathes of it you cannot discuss.

While I don't think he has breached the topic ban, it is better to err on the side of caution on this. Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:57, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

I counted by going all the way down at the bottom of references section to see how many references the article had and then counted sources in sections that didn’t go against my topic ban. So in all honestly my count isn’t accurate. But I’m still getting the impression most of the sources there aren’t related to biology.CycoMa1 (talk) 21:04, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

I suggest that you strike the comment based on your inaccurate count, then. Newimpartial (talk) 21:21, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

GNG doesn't really apply here - it's more of a WP:No page matter. Everything in this article that isn't basic definitional material of gender and related concepts in general (i.e. non-female specific and already covered elsewhere) could easily fit into woman. Crossroads ^-talk- 23:44, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

• Comment It is not a pov fork of Female, as there is no conflict in the point of view. The page Female is concretely about the female sex, while acknowleding that there is also a social gender role of the same name. It is also not duplicative of Gender, which is conspicuously silent on the internal content or meaning of either male or female. The page that most overlaps with this one is Femininity, which is considerably more developed. That might be an appropriate redirect. Sennalen (talk) 04:42, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

  Yeah, I'm not sure if anyone has provided any convincing examples of subject matter that could not be covered in femininity instead of the new female (gender) article. And since this new article is about female gender roles, identity, and expression, I'm not entirely sure what the difference in scope is.  Tewdar  08:00, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

• Delete. WP:NOTDICT. A POV-magnet and vandalism-magnet created just a few days ago, right in the middle of the worst period of controversy over gender-identity, sex-identity, and gender roles. In my mind there is really no chance of this being a stable article within the next five years or so. Softlavender (talk) 09:10, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

* Keep or draftify - I lost my early !vote drafts in edit conflicts - which, if nothing else, has given me time for reflection. Here are the considerations I deem most relevant:

1) WP:AFDISNOTCLEANUP - a lot of photons have been spilled here about the state of the current article, but the considerations relevant to this forum are (1) are quality sources available and (2) is the topic appropriate for an encyclopaedia? I don't think most of the delete !votes address either of these questions beyond the level of WP:IDONTLIKEIT (several of the delete !voters have defended the conduct of editors subsequently banned for disruptive "gender critical" advocacy im the GENSEX area, or !voted in the minority against what has become the community consensus for MOS:GENDERID, as examples of their propensity to IDONTLIKEIT).

2) the WP:POVFORK arguments, where they are not simply a rhetorical gesture, seem to assume that all reliably sourced, encyclopaedic information about female humans belongs either at Female or at Woman; a look at the Talk pages of either page, however, shows that neither offers a destination for content specific to female gender, as opposed to "biological sex". The implicit assumption that there isn't any encyclopaedic content that is specifically female and specifically about gender seems to me to reflect a very strong, and entirely unsubstantiated POV.

3) That said, I have become agnostic about the view I expressed earlier that this article would best be developed in main space. I suspect that I am not the only one who has been put off contributing to the article by the AfD, and the "two track" approach taken by certain editors who are voting to !delete the article while also removing content from it or attempting to redefine or restrict its scope - well, that also inhibits content development. If the article is kept in mainspace, part of me fears that some Delete !voters will engage in deletioniam by other means. Since WP:NODEADLINE applies, building a draft that is clearly compliant with all relevant policies might offer the most promising approach, much as (as an AfD formalist) I believe generally that Notable, encyclopaedic topics should be worked on in article space. Newimpartial (talk) 12:58, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Stop casting WP:ASPERSIONS and using guilt by association. Regardless of accuracy, none of your disparaging of delete 'voters' is relevant whatsoever.

Woman literally has a heading with "gender roles" in it. And we have a whole article for gender roles. Crossroads ^-talk- 18:03, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

diffs, not aspersions

!vote against eventual consensus to expand the scope of DEADNAME - Crossroads !vote against eventual consensus to expand the scope of DEADNAME - Headbomb lengthy defense of Maneesh at ARE - Crossroads defense of Maneesh at ARE - SMcCandlish defense of Maneesh (and attack on me) at ARE - Springee attack on me at the Maneesh ARE - Pyxis Solitary I believe these diffs demonstrate that these editors represent a minority POV in the GENSEX area, which they pursue with a fair degree of vigor; they typically believe that their specific POV represents WP:NPOV and do not typically acknowledge that community consensus in this topic area differs from their particular views.

Newimpartial (talk) 19:17, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

• Draftify/Merge/Redirect/Delete In that order - Let's not throw babies out with the bathwater. Most insightful votes/questions made by @Clicriffhard, @Springee. Kudos to @Trystan in recognizing that we cannot overly prejudice an article by the manner in which it was created. Theheezy (talk) 14:55, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
• Delete POVFORK and noms arguements are persuasive. -Roxy the English speaking dog 00:06, 30 July 2022 (UTC)
• Delete. Crossroads' arguments here and on the various talk pages that this is a POV fork are pretty compelling. I don't see the utility of an article covering essentially the same material found in the many wiki articles discussed above. In particular, I don't see how "female gender" has been sufficiently addressed in RS separately from the concepts of "womanhood" or "gender identity" to warrant a standalone. JoelleJay (talk) 08:57, 30 July 2022 (UTC)
• Merge/Redirect I think this is a matter of WP:PAGEDECIDE. With controversial topics like this, it is difficult to stick to WP:NPOV across a wide range of articles, so in case of doubt, I think it's best to keep the information together. A redirect can go to gender. While it's an implausible redirect, the article has amassed some sources/text that could possibly find their way into other articles. Femke (talk) 09:49, 30 July 2022 (UTC)
• Comment. This appears to be one of the longest Afd's in Wikipedia. What do we have to wait for to close it?? Georgia guy (talk) 11:44, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

  What would your decision be at this stage? It's only been open a week, and there's been three new votes today (so far!)  Tewdar  13:12, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

  As long as new people are coming in to !vote, and this is happening organically rather than as a result of any canvassing, then it makes sense to let it continue a little longer. (I say this as somebody who disagrees with the majority of the most recent !votes.) DanielRigal (talk) 13:35, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

• Keep I'm not convinced that this is a POVFORK of Female or Woman; it seems to have a different scope. I believe the intention of Female (gender) is to discuss the philosophical/metaphysical aspects of that gender category, while woman is more suited to describing the status, issues, challenges, etc. of women in human societies. The current female article is more focused on the sex/biological aspects of female organisms (including humans). Simply because the content of these articles overlaps does not make them POVFORKs of each other. For example, there is substantial overlap between God the Son, Son of God (Christianity) and Jesus in Christianity, yet the three articles discuss different aspects of a related subject, and I do not believe that they are POVFORKs of each other or the general Jesus article. I think the Female (gender) article should be allowed to develop further in that vein, and maybe the eventual fate of the general female article is to serve as a disambiguation page (similar to how, for example, Alcohol disambiguates to Alcohol (chemistry) and Alcohol (drug)). MediaKill13 (talk) 15:40, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

  Interesting theory but I think it's WP:OR/WP:SYNTH. If what you say is correct, then you should be able to point me to two or three good WP:RSes that discuss the philosophical/metaphysical aspects of the female gender, but do not discuss the status, issues, challenges, etc. of women in human societies, and two or three good RSes that discuss the latter without discussing the former. If the sources do not split up the topic in this way, then why should Wikipedia split up the topic in this way? And even if we do split up the topic, why would we call the article about the status, issues, challenges, etc. of women in human societies "Woman", while calling the article about the philosophical/metaphysical aspects of the female gender "female (gender)", instead of something like, "Philosophical and metaphysical aspects of womanhood"? That would at least make it a sub-article instead of a POVFORK. But bottom line, I really don't think anyone in the world refers to the philosophical/metaphysical aspects of woman as "female (gender)". In fact, I think it's the exact opposite of what you say: the female gender role is the status, issues, challenges, etc. of women in human societies. Gender roles are social constructs, not metaphysical ones. Levivich (talk) 16:21, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

  Thanks for the comment, Levivich. I think this is an opportunity to clarify further what I thought could be the scope of this article (and I'll copy part of this comment to the article talk page as well). While I am by no means a subject matter expert on feminist philosophy, I recall reading this book in university a few years back, where the author argued that the gender category "female" has been variously constructed in Western philosophy. For example, I remember her arguing that Plato conceived of the female gender category as espousing passivity as opposed to activity, materiality as opposed to idealism, etc. (There are also sections on how other philosophers have thought of this category). Unfortunately I don't still have access to the book. Your comment If what you say is correct, then you should be able to point me to two or three good WP:RSes that discuss the philosophical/metaphysical aspects of the female gender, but do not discuss the status, issues, challenges, etc. of women in human societies is relevant here because such a thing would be quite difficult, given that "status, issues, challenges" is incredibly broad. In that book, making value judgments about the nature of the female category will obviously affect the "status" of women. What I meant to say is that it wouldn't discuss them in-depth or with specificity, the way that the woman article discusses rape, child marriage, suffrage, motherhood and other such topics. However, I should clarify that I wasn't only thinking of such "academic philosophy" ideas but also on how the female gender category is assigned and conceived in society more broadly. For example, the article might also discuss what sociologists believe to be the perceived origins of female as a gender category; its historical development across societies; whether the category has always been perceived as exclusively belonging to humans of the female sex until recently, or whether there have been other times and places where the distinction was made; what sorts of rights and duties have been attendant on this category, etc. That's where you're right that there's a substantial overlap with gender role article, the gender identity article, and the sex and gender distinction article, only that this article would be specific to female gender roles, identity and sex distinction. The problem is that there's at least a superficial difference between female as a gender category (which is what people are) as opposed to female gender roles (which is what people are expected to do). As to whether this difference is wide enough to justify a separate article, and whether there's enough material to establish the notability of female (gender) separately, that's where I thought that the author(s) of the article should be given the benefit of the doubt and allowed to develop the article further, because in my assessment they're already off to a good start. I feel that given the material that's already been found, there's potential for this article to be an appropriate spinoff of sex and gender distinction, gender identity, gender role, girl, woman, trans woman, gender role, social construction of gender and probably others that I'm missing. At the very least, it should be draftified but not deleted. MediaKill13 (talk) 20:46, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

  We already have the article you're describing: Femininity. Levivich (talk) 23:06, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

  That point has been discussed on the article Talk page, i.e. "Why then should it have a separate article from Femininity?" Beccaynr (talk) 23:37, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

  To which you replied, "...Female gender is broader than stereotypical femininity...". If we made a Venn diagram of female (gender), female (sex), Woman, and femininity, what would be in the first category that's not in any of the other three? Levivich (talk) 01:53, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

  This has been discussed at length on the article Talk page, and in the interests of not bludgeoning this massive discussion, I suggest reviewing that monster truck of a discussion instead of trying to replicate it here. Beccaynr (talk) 02:27, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

  Although it's been asked many times, many ways... never answered, never answered to date. Levivich (talk) 02:57, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

  I think it has been answered several times, in several discussions here and at the Talk page related to the further development of the article as a WP:SPINOFF of gender, as an improvement to woman, and as a way to benefit readers by organizing the many related articles. Beccaynr (talk) 03:08, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

  Yeah, that's the type of answer given on the talk page and in this discussion, but not an answer to the question I asked. Many have said it's not a fork, it's a spin-off, but then cannot specify what content we're spinning off exactly that isn't already spun-off elsewhere. The other response is that this will become clear in time as the article develops, which is why some are voting to draftify. But so far I've yet to see anyone identify two or three concrete topics this article will cover that are not already covered elsewhere. Supposedly it contains less than gender, gender roles, and woman, but more than femininity, and of course not what's currently in female... so what are the topics that need a new spin-off article? Levivich (talk) 03:56, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

  It is a WP:SPINOFF of gender, which includes the sociocultural aspects of female gender, which includes but is not limited gender roles and is more than stereotypical femininity; this article can also improve woman by replacing the wikilink to female (sex) with this article, because it is focused on humans. This artice can likely also have content merged from woman, and potentially help clarify the femininity article. It appears WP:UNDUE to try to include human female gender in the female (sex) article, because that article is not focused on humans and because of the amount of content that can be developed in this article. Instead of a venn diagram, perhaps consider concentric circles, with biology, psychology, sociology, and culture as rings around the concept of female gender - this is a framework to consider for article development. We have related articles, so summary-style sections can also be developed and help the reader find more in-depth information. WP:SPINOFF permits 1. Articles where the expanding volume of an individual section creates an undue weight problem, which seems to apply here, and 2. Large summary style overview meta-articles which are composed of many summary sections, which also applies - one of the aspects that is new is bringing related articles together and harmonizing the related and similar concepts. Beccaynr (talk) 04:22, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

  This is exactly what I mean: you assert it's not limited to gender role and femininity, but you won't answer my Venn diagram question: what exactly is the "not limited" and "more than" of which you speak? What is in this article that's not already in another article? Levivich (talk) 05:11, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

  Exactly. All of the 'landscape' of sources/things to say is already part of the 'territory' of existing articles. There's no gap of unserved territory between them, nor was one of those territories too big requiring a split. Neither of the criteria of WP:SPINOFF were met or led us here; this article was explicitly created to bypass the consensus building process at existing articles, and its own defenders inadvertantly admit as much. Crossroads ^-talk- 05:58, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

  There are a variety of articles related to female gender, e.g. the "social, psychological, cultural and behavioral experience of being a woman or girl, such as gender roles and/or gender identity" - some are linked in the article and others are discussed on the article Talk page. As a meta-article, the topic is more than femininity and includes but is not limited to gender roles. A large summary style overview meta-article [...] composed of many summary sections seems like an undue weight problem for existing articles, so there appears to be support per the WP:SPINOFF guideline for a standalone article. Beccaynr (talk) 06:10, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

  Sigh.... this is exactly the avenue of contributions that will lead to more trouble. As @Clicriffhard rightly points out, weaponizing this article to change all redirects of Female to Female (gender) is exactly what many editors are worried about. Is there evidence that when reliable sources use female to define Woman they mean Female (gender)? That is certainly not the most prominent definition on reliable dictionaries. Going this route of interpreting what is meant by reliable sources when they say X by other sources who have definition of X seems highly WP:OR/WP:SYNTH.

  I'm all for WP:AGF, I agree that certainly there is space for this article, although with more drafting. Weaponizing this article will only lead to more frustration on all sides. Theheezy (talk) 05:20, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

  The article Femininity is not necessarily confined to stereotypical femininity. As for the objection "boys can be feminine" - yes, but people can perform gender that is not what they identify with. Sennalen (talk) 13:14, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

  This will be my last comment to avoid bludgeoning the discussion. On how this article differs from femininity, femininity obviously includes men and boys, while the female (gender) article would presumably exclude men and boys, who belong to the male gender category and thus are outside the article's scope. This really is the point which I understand the authors of the article to be making: that female (gender) is related to many other articles but either discusses the topic in a more in-depth/specific manner or should include other things that should be excluded from other articles. So for instance, it differs from woman since it discusses the female category as it pertains to girls as well; it differs from gender identity since it discusses only one particular gender identity at great length; it differs from sex and gender distinction since it discusses the development of only how the female gender category came to be separate from the female sex category, and so on. I'll reiterate that in response to whether the female (gender) article has enough content to stand on its own as opposed to its content being worked into all these various other articles, there's prima facie evidence of that being the case, and I think the author(s) should be given an opportunity to develop it to such a point. MediaKill13 (talk) 10:43, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

  Nope, see, you're not answering the question either, and what you're describing is, like Beccanyr, like Newimpartial, the very definition of a WP:POVFORK.

  Here's what the proponents of the article are saying: it's not duplicative of Women because it contains information that Women doesn't contain. It's not duplicative of femininity because it contains information that femininity doesn't contain. It's not duplicative of sex and gender distinction because... you get the idea. But my question, consistently is this: what does it contain that is not in any other article? The answer is: nothing. All of the information in female (gender) is contained in some other article. It's just that female (gender) presents the information differently: it is intended to say something different about the same topics than what we say in the other articles. To present it differently. This is the very definition of POVFORK: the same information as other articles, presented differently than it's presented in the other articles.

  And when people ask, "what's the unique information that this page will contain?", other editors answer with anything and everything under the sun... except actually listing two or three things that this page will contain that's not contained in any other page. Levivich (talk) 14:07, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

  WP:SPINOFF permits the creation of meta-articles, which would be unique and not a WP:POVFORK. Female gender as a topic is more than what is contained in any other article, and the contents of the article could reflect that in a meta-article. WP:SPINOFF also permits the creation of articles when attempts to add information creates undue weight problems, and this also appears to be an issue with trying to bring all of these related concepts together in the gender or woman or other articles. Gender is a broad article that links to other main articles, and could have an additional summary-style paragraph that includes a link to this main article. Some gender-related information from woman could also potentially be merged into this article, as discussed here and on the article Talk page, due to the differences between these concepts and the content and size of the articles. This article could have summary-style sections of biological, psychological, sociological, cultural, etc. aspects as they relate to female gender, with links to main articles that exist. By bringing all of these related articles together, this is one way that this article is more than the sum of its parts, and more than what is any one other article. I do not think anyone is suggesting that "anything and everything under the sun" will be included, just that related and relevant articles that fit within the broader topic of female gender, many of which have been indentified in this discussion, in the article, and in the article Talk discussion, could be incorporated to help create a resource for readers about the broad topic of human female gender. Beccaynr (talk) 14:36, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

  A fifth response to my question (If we made a Venn diagram of female (gender), female (sex), Woman, and femininity, what would be in the first category that's not in any of the other three) that still doesn't list even two or three things that this page will contain that's not contained in any other page. If the answer is "nothing", as I've suggested it is, and if you feel the need to respond to this message, please do me the courtesy of stating simply and clearly: yes, there will be nothing in this article that is not in any other article. Or, if the answer is "something", and if you feel the need to respond to this message, please do me the courtesy of stating simply what that something is. Don't tell me it exists, tell me what it is. Or just don't respond.

  We already have meta-articles: woman, gender, gender identity, gender role, femininity, and many more articles about broad concepts. Female (gender) is a POVFORK of those meta-articles. Levivich (talk) 15:03, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

  Levivich, there does not appear to be a guideline or policy that requires an answer to your Venn diagram question beyond what has been provided, which is that a meta-article, permitted by WP:SPINOFF, is unique and does not exist in any other article. It is "something" to help readers access information about a distinctly broad topic, instead of scattering related information in a disconnected manner around the encyclopedia. We have an opportunity to do better than what we currently have. This article is a way to help accommodate the variations in which female gender is presented and discussed and improves the encyclopedia. Maybe you are not familiar with articles visited by users insisting on deadnames and misgendering article subjects - this is part of why it seems surprising for Wikipedia, which otherwise seems to have a consensus on this topic, to define woman with a link to a female article focused on biology for species generally, instead of a female (gender) article that reflects established scholarship as it relates to humans and also links to a female article about species generally. As a meta-article that encompasses the existing articles, it does not appear to be a POVFORK. Beccaynr (talk) 15:43, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

  I know I said that would be my last comment, but hopefully this will serve as a direct response to the question you posted in bold (and be my really last comment). The answer is: it will be a collection and in-depth expansion of what exists scattered among numerous other articles. To illustrate my point, I could apply the same line of reasoning to the article you pointed me to: Femininity. I see nothing in that article that could not be covered under small sections in all the articles mentioned in its "See also" hatnotes. We could just as easily say that femininity should be deleted and its content covered separately in the following articles: woman, girl, sex differences in psychology, physical attractiveness§female-specific factors, feminine beauty ideal, clothing§gender differentiation, pink, body modification, gender roles, women in Christianity, women in Islam, women in Hinduism, women in China, women in Russia, effeminacy, lipstick feminism, difference feminism. But my understanding of the content forking guideline is that summary style articles such as femininity and female (gender) serve an important role by collecting related information under one relevant topic, but which information is also contained in sections of other articles. I've already stated some of the content that could be discussed in a female (gender) summary style article in my previous comments, which could be treated in this article keeping in mind the perspective of female as a gender category and not as specific people, or traits, or roles, or biological qualities. MediaKill13 (talk) 15:54, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

  The article will approptiately contain detail that would be UNDUE for Female or Woman or Gender or Sex and gender distinction, just the same as Women's association football contains detail that IS UNDUE for Association football or Women's sports, and Positron contains detail that is UNDUE for Particle physics or Electron. An article need not colonize a new region of the Venn diagram to be encyclopaedic. Newimpartial (talk) 15:28, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

  I know I'm interrupting a larger argument, but: you asked for sources which distinguish female gender from women, and I think that finding such sources is very simple actually.

  Some sources that discuss the female gender philosophically without discussing concrete issues facing women in human societies are this paper from the lead of Gender, this page on gender from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and basically anything ever written by Judith Butler. In fact, gender studies is an entire field of study that is separate from women's studies, and which is usually quite philosophical in nature.

  Some sources that discuss issues faced by women concretely without reference to the female gender philosophically are basically any source that comes directly from a feminist organization, or most news sources on this topic. So for example, here's a recent opinion article about Roe v. Wade, and here's a paper on the economic impact of the gender pay gap, taken arbitrarily from the article gender pay gap.

  Maybe it's just because I'm very acquainted with this distinction and these sources, but I really don't get the confusion here. They are obviously separate topics and I frankly find the insistence that they're not baffling. Loki (talk) 06:09, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

  I did not ask for sources that distinguish female gender from women. What I asked for was far more specific than that. I know the difference between gender studies and women's studies; that's not what we're talking about here. Levivich (talk) 14:03, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

  Okay then:

  a) What were you asking for that the sources I provided didn't cover?

  b) Is that distinction relevant for whether female (gender) has separate notability from woman? Loki (talk) 20:46, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

  Despite the fact that Wikipedia (which is not an RS) has separate articles on them, I don't know of any university where what was originally called "women's studies" hasn't been subsumed into "gender studies". Anyway, the stuff you mention can be and is covered at gender and social construction of gender. Crossroads ^-talk- 16:19, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

  Sure, in the same way that woman covers material that is also covered at uterus, vagina, and vulva; at feminist movement, violence against women, and gender role; and at mother, nuclear family and total fertility rate, among many many others. Subtopics can have their own separate article if they have separate notability, and female (gender) clearly does. Loki (talk) 20:52, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

• Delete per Crossroads and Pyxis Solitary. — Czello 08:57, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
• Delete. (Or merge/redirect/draftify if that helps build consensus for one of those outcomes.) I haven't read all 50K of Talk:Woman or the 225K of this page, so maybe this is naive or maybe this helps my see the forest from trees, but I don't see how it serves the reader to bifurcate wikipedia's coverage of the biological, social, psychological, and philosophical aspects of what it means to be female/woman this way. Yilloslime (talk) 16:04, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
• Draftify at best. There is no consensus even for the lead sentence. Talk:Female_(gender)#Title_and_first_sentence Kolya Butternut (talk) 22:20, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
• Delete per Levivich. Jusdafax (talk) 23:14, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
• Delete: looks like a POV fork, can be covered in the Gender article. if the intention was linking from pages that describe women as adult females, then that should be taken care of in those pages, not here. if the sources meant women are adult humans of female gender and not female sex, or both, then write as much in those articles, links only obfuscates the issue. regards, TryKid ^{[dubious – discuss]} 01:48, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
• Keep or draftify per NewImpartial. ––FormalDude talk 04:50, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

References (female gender)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.