Venus symbol

Venus symbol

A symbol of feminism based on Venus symbol

Coat of arms of Špania Dolina in Slovakia, symbolising copper mining

The Venus symbol (♀) is a depiction of a circle with a small cross below it. The symbol is historically associated with the Roman goddess Venus or the Greek goddess Aphrodite. It has a Unicode designation of U+2640, and is used in various media to represent things associated in some way with the mythological character, including:

• The female sex^[1]
• The planet Venus
• The chemical element copper
• Feminism in philosophy and sociology
• The female connector in a pair of mating connectors or fasteners

A widely held belief is that it represents a hand mirror (originally often made of bronze), with the top half of the symbol representing the actual mirror, and the bottom half representing the handle of the mirror. However, another plausible origin of the symbol is it being a contraction of script Greek.^[1]

See also

• Classical planets in Western alchemy
• Mars symbol
• Gender symbol
• The ankh, an Egyptian hieroglyph resembling the Venus symbol

References