MySQL -- using only SQL, how to return the results of an alternate query if the current query returned empty?

Suppose we have this person table

id        name       gender 
1         John       male
2         Kurt       male
3         Tyler      male
4         Matthias开发者_JS百科   male

And we have this query

SELECT * FROM person WHERE gender = female

which would return empty

Is there a way in MySQL(inside the SQL) to run and return the results of an alternate query if the current query returned empty?

Something like "if there are no rows returned, return rows with gender = male instead"

Note that this only works in stored procedures and functions because of IF THEN / ELSE statement disposal.

IF EXISTS (SELECT 0 FROM person WHERE gender = female) THEN
  SELECT * FROM person WHERE gender = female
ELSE
  SELECT * FROM person WHERE gender = male

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/if-statement.html
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/exists-and-not-exists-subqueries.html