The term " womanhood " merely means the state of being a woman, having passed the menarche; " femininity " is used to refer to a set of typical female qualities associated with a certain attitude to gender roles; " womanliness " is like " femininity ", but is usually associated with a different view of gender roles; " femaleness " is a general term, but is often used as shorthand for " human femaleness "; " distaff " is an archaic adjective derived from women's conventional role as a spinner, now used only as a deliberate archaism; " muliebrity " is a neologism ( derived from the Latin ) meant to provide a female counterpart of " virility ", but used very loosely, sometimes to mean merely " womanhood ", sometimes " femininity " and sometimes even as a collective term for women.
