Single-gender world

A relatively common motif in speculative fiction is the existence of single-gender worlds or single-sex societies. These fictional societies have long been one of the primary ways to explore implications of gender and gender-differences in science fiction and fantasy. Many of these predate a widespread distinction between gender and sex and conflate the two.

In the fictional setting, these societies often arise due to elimination of one sex through war or natural disasters and disease. The societies may be portrayed as utopian or dystopian, as seen in pulp tales of oppressive matriarchies.

Women-only worlds

There is a long tradition of female-only places in literature and mythology, starting with the Amazons and continuing into some examples of feminist utopias. In speculative fiction, women-only worlds have been imagined to come about, among other approaches, by the action of disease that wipes out men, along with the development of technological or mystical method that allow women to reproduce parthenogenically. The societies may not necessarily be lesbian, or sexual at all—a famous early sexless example being Herland (1915) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

In literature

During the pulp era, matriarchal dystopias were relatively common, in which women-only or women-controlled societies were shown unfavourably. In John Wyndham's Consider Her Ways (1956), male rule is shown as being repressive of women, but freedom from patriarchy is only possible in an authoritarian caste-based female-only society.