Songfacts®:

• "What Makes A Woman," celebrates the combination of qualities that the fairer sex brings to the world. Speaking during her first #SmileSunday livestream Q&A, a pregnant Perry said: "It's a great song about how women are so versatile and adaptable and incredible, and I'm realizing a new layer of that right now as I create life."
• Perry wrote the song as an appreciation for women before she got pregnant. However, once she had a child inside her, it took on a deeper meaning. The California singer told Apple Music's Zane Lowe she started thinking, "'Woah. Women are able to create a life and live and deal with all this stuff and give birth to a watermelon through a f---ing tiny thing. Great. This is wild'... Your body is amazing."
• Speaking to the NRJ Lebanon radio station in June 2020, Perry explained she was dedicating the song to her unborn child. "That is a hope I have for my future child, is that she doesn't have any limits on any of her dreams, or what she wants to be, or who she thinks she is. And, you know, she can change whenever she wants," she dished. "She doesn't have to... she can try everything on if she wants; figure out what fits. And so I think that song is important to me and important for her."
• Perry said the song's stripped-down acoustic pop soundscape is a direction she'd like to visit more. She hinted as it's the closing song on Smile, "Maybe that ending is just a beginning."
• Perry penned the song with Sarah Hudson, with whom she's collaborated on several of her hit tunes including her #1 single "Dark Horse." The other writers were Swedish-American songwriter Johan Carlsson, One Direction hitmaker John Ryan, and American songwriter and rapper Jacob Kasher Hindlin.
  
  Johan Carlsson produced the track with Elvira Anderfjärd.