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This paper examines a small group of sixteenth-century manuscript maps made in Normandy to argue that the placement and properties of the female figures positioned on them were deliberate and strategic. It inventories the locations where female figures can be found on the maps and concludes that the women served as elements not only of design and decoration but also of desire, intended to attract the interest and enhance the appeal of the distant sites where French navigators hoped to establish trade and settlement. The female figures, often nude and prominently placed, communicated the beauty and fertility of the potential colonies, and their passivity and tractable character. The women on the maps were both bait and reward to the powerful male viewers to whom the maps were addressed. © 2026 British Cartographic Society.