What is the difference between 女子 and 女の人? I'm learning kanji through WaniKani, and stumbled upon three pieces of vocabulary that have similar meanings, but no clear guidance on which should be used in which occasion: * {}{}: defined as girl, young girl, young lady, young woman * {}: defined as girl, woman * {}{}: defined as woman The first one is clearly the one that stands out as clearly referring to young women, and this answer corroborates that and clarifies the difference between the first two. That same question also states that the {} in {} doesn't refer to child, but is instead a kind of "counter." In that case, it becomes unclear to me when {} and {}{} should be used. Or simply {}, for that matter. P.S.: haven't gotten to {} yet, but I assume the same principles will apply there too?

In most cases when you want to say _woman_ in a sentence, you can use or possibly {} is safer because it is more polite, even if sometimes may sound natural.

As suggested in the linked answer, is more used in contexts like "for female" or, in recent usage, to refer to a category of women who are engaged in a certain kind of activities. An example of the former is . For the latter, means _women who paly golf_ and means _women who ride motor bikes_.

sounds usually vulgar if used to mean _women_. It can appear in the sense of _for female_ as in {} (bath for women, in public bath).

So, in the sense of _woman_ , the difference of // is more a matter of collocation/usage.

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Note that a student can call female classmates . So they can say ( _I talked with a female classmate_ ), which would sound odd if a 30 year old guy says it (He should say if it is an adult woman; if a young woman/girl).

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Similarly {} would be the most common if you mean a male individual.