The woman radical 女

Read nǚ, 3 strokes. It indexes 53 distinct HSK characters.

53HSK characters

3Strokes

#38Radical number

女Glyph

Quick answer

What does the woman radical (女) mean, and which characters use it?

Woman (女, nǚ) is Kangxi radical 38, and it usually marks a character whose meaning is connected to woman. 53 distinct HSK characters are filed under it, the most common being 好, 如, 女. When you meet a new character carrying 女, expect its sense to touch woman and let the other component hint at the sound.

How this radical works inside a character

Most characters built on 女 follow the meaning-plus-sound pattern: 女 sits on one side to signal the woman sense, and a second component supplies the approximate pronunciation. So you are rarely memorizing a whole new shape, you are recognizing woman plus a part you may already read. The list below is in corpus-frequency order, so the characters you will actually meet first are at the top: learn them in this order and the rest of the woman-radical family gets easier as you go.

All 53 woman characters 53 characters

#	Char	Pīnyīn	Strokes	HSK 3.0	HSK 2.0
1	好	hǎo	6	1	1
2	如	rú	6	2	3
3	女	nǚ	3	1	1
4	威	wēi	9	6	5
5	奶	nǎi	5	1	2
6	婚	hūn	11	3	3
7	妙	miào	7	6	5
8	妇	fù	6	4	5
9	委	wěi	8	5	5
10	姐	jiě	8	1	1
11	始	shǐ	8	3	2
12	妥	tuǒ	7	7-9	6
13	姓	xìng	8	2	2
14	媒	méi	12	3	6
15	婆	pó	11	4	6
16	嫌	xián	13	6	6
17	妈	mā	6	1	1
18	妹	mèi	8	1	2
19	姑	gū	8	3	5
20	娘	niáng	10	3	5
21	妨	fáng	7	7-9	5
22	她	tā	6	1	1
23	妻	qī	8	4	2
24	姨	yí	9	4	3
25	娱	yú	10	6	5
26	妆	zhuāng	6	7-9	6
27	妒	dù	7	7-9	6
28	姥	lǎo	9	7-9	5
29	姿	zī	9	7-9	5
30	娇	jiāo	9	7-9	6
31	嫁	jià	13	7-9	5
32	娃	wá	9	6	6
33	奴	nú	5	7-9	6
34	奸	jiān	6	7-9	·
35	妄	wàng	6	7-9	6
36	妖	yāo	7	7-9	·
37	姆	mǔ	8	7-9	6
38	姜	jiāng	9	7-9	·
39	姻	yīn	9	7-9	5
40	娥	é	10	7-9	·
41	娶	qǔ	11	7-9	5
42	婉	wǎn	11	7-9	·
43	婪	lán	11	7-9	6
44	婴	yīng	11	7-9	6
45	婿	xù	12	7-9	·
46	媚	mèi	12	7-9	·
47	嫂	sǎo	12	7-9	6
48	媲	pì	13	7-9	·
49	媳	xí	13	7-9	6
50	嫉	jí	13	7-9	6
51	嫦	cháng	14	7-9	·
52	嫩	nèn	14	7-9	5
53	嬉	xī	15	7-9	·

tone 1 tone 2 tone 3 tone 4 neutral Order = corpus frequency, most common first · · = not in that scheme

Strokes and radical assignment come from the Unicode Han Database (Unicode 17.0.0, field kRSUnicode); the HSK levels and the frequency order are computed from the shipped HSK word lists. A small number of characters have a contested radical across dictionaries; the primary Unicode analysis is used throughout. Last verified 2026-07-24. See the full radical explorer or the characters-per-level reference.

Recommended app · disclosed

Drill the woman-radical characters on a schedule

This list is free to browse and self-test here, always. If you would rather practice recognizing these characters on your phone with spaced repetition, we recommend Wordbrush, our one disclosed pick. Never a gate on this page.

See why