Gender Symbols

The full set of gender signs: female ♀ and male ♂, the combined ⚥, transgender ⚧, doubled ⚢ ⚣ and neuter ⚲, alongside the signage forms and the marriage marks genealogists use. Each is a text character, so it keeps your font colour and size wherever it is pasted.

Copy and Paste Gender Symbols

Every gender sign Unicode encodes is here, and the set is small enough to be complete: eleven characters in one short run from U+26A2 to U+26B2, plus ♀ and ♂ themselves. Alongside them sit the signage forms used on doors and the relationship marks used in family trees.

What Are Gender Symbols?

♀ and ♂ are older than the meaning most people now attach to them. They are the planetary signs for Venus and Mars, used in astronomy and alchemy long before Carl Linnaeus borrowed them in the 1750s to mark plant sexes — the first use of these two characters in the sense everyone reads today.

Unicode still names them Female Sign and Male Sign rather than Venus and Mars, but the same two characters do both jobs, which is why they also appear among the planetary glyphs on the zodiac page. Nothing about the character changes; only the context does.

How to Use Gender Symbols

Gender Symbols in Forms and Profiles

These are text characters, so ♀ in a spreadsheet column or a form label sorts, searches and exports like any other letter. An icon does none of that. The same applies to a bio or a display name, where many platforms strip emoji but leave characters like these untouched.

Typing Gender Symbols on a Keyboard

♀ and ♂ have one-digit Windows shortcuts: Alt and 12 for the female sign, Alt and 11 for the male one. They sit at positions eleven and twelve of the original PC character set, alongside the heart at Alt+3 and the music note at Alt+13.

The rest need the full value — Alt and 9895 for ⚧, 9890 for ⚢ — or type 26A7 and press Alt+X in Word. On a Mac the Character Viewer opens with Ctrl+Cmd+Space; on Linux, Ctrl+Shift+U followed by the hex value.

Types of Gender Symbols

The Two Basic Gender Symbols

♀ U+2640 is a circle above a cross, the hand mirror of Venus. ♂ U+2642 is a circle with an arrow, the shield and spear of Mars. Both render in your text colour and scale with your font.

Combined Gender Symbols

⚥ joins the two into one figure and is read as intersex or as both. ⚤ interlocks them side by side and is used for heterosexuality. ⚢ is two female signs joined and ⚣ two male signs, used for lesbian and gay relationships respectively.

Transgender and Neuter Gender Symbols

⚧ is the transgender symbol — a male sign with a stroke combined with the male-and-female sign. It was added to Unicode in 2001 and is the character behind the transgender flag emoji. ⚦ ⚨ ⚩ are the related male-with-stroke forms, vertical and horizontal, which have been used for various non-binary and third-gender readings. ⚲ is Neuter, a circle with a plain downward stroke, used in botany for a flower with neither functional stamens nor pistils.

Signage Gender Symbols

🚹 🚺 🚻 are the door signs — men's, women's and a shared restroom. ㊚ ㊛ are the Japanese circled ideographs for male and female, used the same way on signage in Japan and China. These are pictures rather than signs, so they arrive in colour on most devices.

Relationship Gender Symbols

⚭ is Marriage, ⚮ Divorce and ⚯ Unmarried Partnership. They sit in the same block as the gender signs because genealogy uses them together: a family tree draws ⚭ between two people to show a marriage and ⚮ where it ended.

Best Uses for Gender Symbols

Gender Symbols in Documents and Data

Biology and medicine still use ♀ and ♂ as the compact way to mark a specimen or a case, and genealogy uses the relationship marks the same way. In both, the point is that the symbol takes one character where a word takes several and stays readable in a narrow column.

Gender Symbols in Profiles and Messages

⚧ in particular is used as a statement of identity in bios and display names, and it works there precisely because it is a character rather than an image — it cannot be stripped by a platform that filters emoji, and it takes whatever colour the surrounding text has.

Gender Symbols Unicode Names and Codes

The formal names are descriptive rather than social: ♀ is U+2640 Female Sign, ♂ U+2642 Male Sign, ⚧ U+26A7 Male with Stroke and Male and Female Sign, ⚲ U+26B2 Neuter, ⚭ U+26AD Marriage Symbol. Unicode describes the drawing and leaves the reading to the reader, which is why the transgender symbol has such an unwieldy official name.

The main run from U+26A2 to U+26B2 was added in 2005 and is well supported. 🚹 🚺 🚻 are emoji and will be drawn in colour; ㊚ ㊛ are CJK characters and occupy a full character cell, so they look wider than the rest.

Frequently Asked Questions About Gender Symbols

How do I type the female and male symbols?

On Windows, Alt and 12 gives ♀ and Alt and 11 gives ♂, both on the numeric keypad — two of the shortest Alt codes there are. Everything else needs the full value, such as Alt and 9895 for ⚧, or 26A7 followed by Alt+X in Word.

What is the transgender symbol?

⚧ U+26A7. Unicode calls it Male with Stroke and Male and Female Sign, describing how it is drawn rather than what it means. It combines the male sign, the female sign and a stroked male sign in one figure, and it is the character used in the transgender flag emoji.

Why are ♀ and ♂ also planet symbols?

Because that is what they were first. They are the astronomical signs for Venus and Mars, and Linnaeus borrowed them in the 1750s to mark plant sexes. The same two characters serve both meanings, which is why they appear here and among the planetary glyphs.

What do ⚢ and ⚣ mean?

⚢ is two joined female signs and ⚣ two joined male signs, used for lesbian and gay relationships. ⚤ interlocks a female and a male sign and is used for heterosexuality. All three are ordinary characters with no colour of their own.

Is there a non-binary symbol?

Unicode has no character named for non-binary identity. ⚲ Neuter is the closest formally named option, though its origin is botanical, and ⚦ ⚨ ⚩ — the male-with-stroke forms — are used in practice. None of them was encoded for that purpose, and the honest answer is that the standard has not caught up.

What are ⚭ ⚮ and ⚯ for?

Genealogy. ⚭ marks a marriage between two people in a family tree, ⚮ a divorce and ⚯ an unmarried partnership. They share a Unicode block with the gender signs because they are used alongside them.

Related Collections for Gender Symbols

♀ and ♂ are also the planetary signs for Venus and Mars and appear among the zodiac symbols. For people rather than signs, see the smiley face symbols, and for the hearts often paired with ⚢ or ⚣, the heart symbols. Everything else is indexed at symbol collections.