Gender symbol

A gender symbol denotes the sex of an organism or characterizes an agent by gender.

Standard symbols

The two standard gender symbols denoting male ♂ and female ♀ are derived from astrological symbols, denoting the classical planets Mars and Venus, respectively. These symbols have been in use since the Renaissance also denoting elements in alchemy, specifically the metals iron and copper.

They were first used to denote the effective sex of plants (i.e. sex of individual in a given crossbreed, since most plants are hermaphroditic) by Carl Linnaeus in 1751. They are still used in scientific publications to indicate the sex of an individual, for example of a patient.Pedigree charts published in scientific papers now more commonly use a square for male and a circle for female.

The shape of the Mars symbol has been likened to an iron-tipped spear (i.e. a weapon mainly used by men) and shape of the Venus symbol to a bronze mirror or a distaff (stereotypically associated with women in former centuries).