womanhood

Etymology

From Middle English womanhoode, wommanhod, whomanhode, variants of wommanhede; synchronically analyzable as woman + -hood.

noun

1. The state or condition of being a woman.
2. All of the women of a given place, area, or subgroup regarded collectively.
   There was only one thing to be done: call out, start the alarm, set the heather on fire! Awaken the womanhood of America to free the motherhood of the world! 1913, Rachel Galvin, quoting Margaret Sanger, “Margaret Sanger's "Deeds of Terrible Virtue"”, in Humanities, volume 19, number 5, National Endowment for the Humanities, published 1988, archived from the original on 2017-01-05
   […]the white women, several of whom had been watching the massacre of the Negro men, pounced on the Negress. I do not wish to be understood as saying that these women were representatives of the womanhood of East St. Louis. Their faces showed, all too plainly, exactly who and what they were. 1917, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, quoting Carlos F. Hurd, chapter II, in [Untitled, From the St. Louis Post Dispatch], July 3rd, 1917, quoted in The East St. Louis Massacre: The Greatest Outrage of the Century, retrieved 2020-11-19, page 12
   What hast thou done, / O womanhood of France, / Mother and daughter, sister, sweetheart, wife, / What hast thou done, amid this fateful strife. // To prove the pride of thine inheritance / In this fair land of freedom and romance? 1920 [1909], Henry Van Dyke, “The Red Flower and Golden Stars”, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke, new and revised edition, dated to 1914–1916, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, Jeanne d’Arc Returns, lines 1–5, page 384
3. The idealized nature of a woman: all of the characteristics traditionally and ideally ascribed to womanliness regarded collectively.
   From the kitchen comes the even murmur of their voices. Mother and daughter: the protocols of womanhood being passed on, generation to generation. 2005, J. M. Coetzee, “Four”, in Slow Man, New York: Viking, page 31
4. The self-concept of a woman with respect to her possession of the various qualities traditionally and ideally ascribed to womanliness; a woman's sense or view of herself as being more or less womanly.
5. (euphemistic) The female genitalia, especially the vulva.
   Easing down to her panties slowly as if investigating a carrier of a dangerous plague, both hands were quivering like it was contagious while feeling extraordinarily alarmed, he commenced to inspect her womanhood. 2007, Mark A. Cherpak, Circle of Fear: Uncharted Worlds, page 264