Some people avoid using this word because they think it is offensive to women, and they use humankind instead.
2. A human regardless of sex or age; a person or an adult male human belonging to a specific occupation, group, nationality, or other category.3. The human race; mankind; for example, man's quest for peace or the human race as a whole is constantly striving for peace.
Traditionally, many writers have used man and words derived from it to indicate any or all of the human race regardless of sex.
In fact, man is one of the oldest words in English and this is also the oldest use of the word. In Old English, the principal sense of man was "a human" or "human being", and the words wer (related to Latin vir) and wyf, or wæpman and wifman, were used to refer to "a male human" and "a female human" respectively.
The wer term is used today in the word werewolf.
Late in Middle English, man replaced wer as the term for "a male human"; while wyfman (which evolved into present-day woman) has been used to indicate "a female human".
Regardless of these changes, man and mankind have continued to be used in their original senses of "a human" and "a human being".