Male and female as a recurring pair
ٱلذَّكَرُ كَٱلْأُنثَىٰ
al-dhakaru ka-l-unthā — the male is not like the female
The Qur'an repeatedly pairs dhakar and unthā across very different contexts — creation, procreation, divine recompense, and a disputed allocation of the sexes between people and God — and reading the occurrences together shows the pair being used both to state a difference (3:36, 53:21) and to deny that the difference matters (3:195, 4:124, 16:97, 40:40, 49:13).
The clause in (3:36) — "and the male is not like the female" — is spoken by the mother of Mary immediately after she has delivered "a female," and it asserts a distinction at the point where the sex of a child is announced. The same two nouns, dhakar and unthā, recur in several other frames. In the recompense contexts the pair is embedded in a disjunctive phrase, "whether male or female," attached to divine response: God "does not let go to waste the work of any worker among you, whether male or female" (3:195), and entry into the Garden is promised to "whoever does, of the sound deeds, [whether] male or female, while he is one who trusts" (4:124; cf. 16:97 and 40:40, which repeat the same construction almost verbatim). Here the pairing functions to extend a promise across the distinction rather than to mark it. In (49:13) the pair appears in a creation statement addressed to all people — "We have indeed created you from a male and a female" — which then grounds a claim that honor depends not on lineage or group but on being "most guarded." In the creation oaths and descriptions the pair is definitional: God "created the two paired ones: the male and the female" (53:45; cf. 75:39), He "pairs them as males and females" (42:50), and the male and the female are invoked inside the oath as what God created (92:3). One occurrence turns the pair into a rhetorical accusation: "Is the male for you, and for Him the female?" (53:21). Read together, the occurrences show the Qur'an using this fixed pair flexibly: to state a real difference (3:36), to question an unequal distribution (53:21), and elsewhere to insist that the difference has no bearing on recompense (3:195, 4:124, 16:97, 40:40) or on standing before God (49:13).
Where it occurs
- 3:36 Asserts a difference between male and female at the birth of a girl, the only occurrence where the pair is explicitly compared with kāf.
- 3:195 Extends the promise that no worker's deed is wasted to both male and female, adding "you are from one another."
- 4:124 Makes entry into the Garden conditional on sound deeds and trust, "whether male or female."
- 16:97 Promises a wholesome life and reward to whoever does a sound deed, "whether male or female."
- 40:40 Repeats the condition "whether male or female" for entry into the Garden and provision without reckoning.
- 42:50 Uses the pair in the plural (dhukrānan wa-ināthan) for how God pairs offspring.
- 49:13 Grounds the creation of all people "from a male and a female" before stating that the most honored is the most guarded.
- 53:21 Splits the pair across two clauses to challenge an allocation of males to people and females to God.
- 53:45 Names the male and the female as "the two paired ones" that God created.
- 75:39 Repeats the creation formula: from it He made "the two paired ones: the male and the female."
- 92:3 Swears by what created the male and the female, with the pair invoked inside the oath as what was created.
All Qur'anic expressions