Honorary male

An honorary male or honorary man is a woman who is accorded the status of a man without disrupting the patriarchal status quo. Queen Hatshepsut was the first female ruler of ancient Egypt after Sobekneferu to act as a full pharaoh. Ruling in the New Kingdom, Hatshepsut depicted and asserted herself as a male ruler. In artwork and sculpture of Hatshepsut, she is represented in the traditional pharaoh headdress, kilt, and false beard—a symbol of kingship; her breasts are reduced and deemphasized, and her shoulders are broad and manly. Hatshepsut executed several building projects and military campaigns and brought Egypt into a period of peace and prosperity. Hatshepsut's actions to improve the status of women during this time are unknown, although women in ancient Egypt could decide their own professions, marry whomever they desired, contract prenuptial agreements that favored them, divorce their husbands, own real estate, enter the clergy, and had access to birth control and abortions. Women in Egypt during this time held higher status than their counterparts in other countries, and more than Egyptian women would be in later centuries after the rise of Christianity in the 4th century AD and later Islam in the 7th century AD. Female burials in the La Tène culture in Western Europe between 450 BC and 380 BC indicate the elite status of some women. Indicators of elite status in Central and Southern Germany in this period included objects of power similar to those found in preceding periods. High status graves in the preceding Hallstatt period (750 BC to 450 BC) included gold neck rings, bronze daggers, bronze drinking vessels, and four-wheeled wagons. Grave sites in the Hochdorf, Biberach region, excavated in 1970, found only elite male burial objects before and during the Hallstat Period. However, in 480 BC, the number of elite male graves began dropping and were suddenly replaced by elite female graves. Around the same time these high status burials transitioned from majority men to women.