Women today who live against the norm are perceived as different and wild. Even women who chose to have a career instead of a family are identified. A successful businesswoman who is single and over thirty draws as much attention today as a medicinal healer did in the fifteenth century. We question her values, her motives and even her sexuality. Society breaks down the intricate details of her life to prove that at the core she is deficient.
There is a social stigma attached to the female gender. In Paganism women were revered, women were the lifeblood of not only the people, but the world. Women were so honoured that we called our land ‘Mother Earth’. There were many goddesses’ available who assisted in different stages and aspects of life. Even as early as the Ancient Romans and Greeks: Nefertiti, Cleopatra, Venus, Nike. These women were celebrated at harvest to bring good crops, and appeased with offerings should bad weather befall the community.
Even with the birth of Christianity, with the amalgamation of Paganism to the new Roman Catholic faith women were revered. Ever went looking for eggs in the early spring? Ever place gifts beneath a tree? These were all pagan rituals to appease female deities. This was not acceptable to a new male-dominated society. The Church kept only one woman sacred, and tarnished the others. Even Mary Magdalene was given the label first of a prostitute, then as a friend of Jesus who has been saved by his grace. The Church has even gone so far as to say that women have pains during childbirth because ‘we’ tempted Adam from the Garden of Eden, and anybody who assisted in taking away those pains used the hands of the devil.
It is evident in today’s society that the men in power still perceive women as the lesser sex. Women are the tainted gender forever able to lure the devil and corrupt men. The men in power have been saying this for so long that even women have begun to believe them. Women are beaten and abused daily by loved ones, and when asked why they didn’t leave sooner the common response is that they ‘deserved it’ and ‘he really does love me”.
Our elders are abandoned, their chatter seen as useless. We don’t pass stories from generation to generation. We don’t share family histories in oral tradition. We don’t know how to cure common aliments. Our grandmothers are not even used to raise the grandchildren, unworthy even of that!
Young females who prefer to live alone, or are self-sufficient are targeted. There must be something wrong with her? Why hasn’t she found a man? What is she waiting for? She won’t be of much use for much longer. Her child-bearing years are behind her, all she has left to live for are her cats. Statements like these are all too common. Sub-consciously we use them to judge others. If we can prove that she is less worthy, we can justify her fate.
Isn’t it bad enough that during the fourteen hundred’s, Mrs. Smith (the miller’s wife) accused Mrs. Jones (the baker’s wife) of cursing the crops, today women have honed their skills and can attack each other just as easily. We attack each other with just as much vehemence and usually we don’t even require a reason! At least they had bad crops to blame in the fifteenth century!
Until we ban together as women, standing together in solidarity and not playing a ‘man’s game’ or ‘wearing the pants’ we as a gender will never move forward.
