A woman is a female human being. The term woman is usually reserved for an adult, with the term girl being the usual term for a female child or adolescent. The term woman is also sometimes used to identify a female human, regardless of age, as in phrases such as “women's rights”. Women with typical genetic development are capable of giving birth from puberty until menopause.
Womanhood is the period in a human female's life after she has passed through childhood and adolescence, generally around age 18.
The word woman can be used generally to mean any female human or specifically to mean an adult female human, as contrasted with girl. The word girl originally meant “young person of either sex” in English. It was only around the beginning of the 16th century that it came to mean specifically a female child. The term girl is sometimes used colloquially to refer to a young or unmarried woman; however, during the early 1970s, feminists challenged such use because the using the word to refer to a fully grown woman may cause offence. Particularly, previously common terms, such as office girl, are no longer used.
