Today we know about the mitochondrial Eve, who, according to Wikipedia, one of my favorite sources, is “the most recent common matrilineal ancestor from whom we are all descended”. There are little pieces of her in all of us. These days, I think there is a little bit of the biblical Eve in many of us too. We’re not too content to just go along to get along. Inquiring minds want to know, and to test, and to push against what might hold us back.
Boadicea, or, if you prefer: Boudica or Boudigga, was a feisty Celtic woman from the first century. There is a lot of the ‘it has been said’ about her, and she is a recurring favorite flavor on many of the ‘learning’ channels. It’s probably not her real name, and the spelling is beside the point, but it is what the Romans called her, and it’s a variation on the Celtic name for the Goddess of Victory. Victorious she was for a while, yet in the end she lost it all to the better-equipped Romans. But lead and fight she did, in a time and place where it was natural for a capable woman to do so. Can you think of any other historically prominent women from that time until the late Renaissance and Queen Elizabeth I? Oh, maybe Eleanor of Aquitaine or Isabella D’Este, but just in passing.
In the seventh century, the Council of Nantes argued that women were “soulless beasts”, defectives (defectives! Now, I ask you!) who could be treated as such by men, their natural masters. Whew! It is only in the last century or so that women have started to reassert themselves beyond the realm of farm, hearth and home, and to shed some of the sentimentality assigned to ‘the soft sex’. Women became teachers, secretaries, authors, even actresses - these and other professions had been open only to men. New professions such as nursing - thank you Florence Nightingale - came into being, and they, in turn, spawned other professions: the first airline hostesses had to be registered nurses.
Women have had a harder time breaking into the sciences. Women physicians had a tough, uphill battle just to get their education, much less practice. Women were thought to lack the mental skills to compete in fields such as astronomy, physics, or chemistry. Marie Curie, after years of arduous research and many important discoveries, was one of the first to disprove this idea. Just two years after the prize was established, she became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and she is one of only four people who have been awarded it twice. Granted, the percentage of women who’ve won the prize still remains relatively low, but we’re working on it.
Over the ages, women were allowed to vote for various things at various times and under various conditions. In some places they could vote on local issues if they were the head of the household, paid taxes, or owned property outright. The move toward the unrestricted right to vote or hold political office, usually tied to the literacy rate of a country’s women and to the enlightenment of a country’s men, was quietly led by the Scandinavians. They were closely followed by the United Kingdom and the United States, where the women were a quite bit more vocal about the subject and had a lot more persuading to do. In 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that, among other things, introduced voting rights for women into international law. Sadly, some countries have yet to get on the bandwagon.
Today we’ve all but finished chipping away at that invisible barrier, the ‘glass ceiling’ that denies many women the positions for which they are eminently qualified in government, banking, and industry. The pay scales may still be a bit askew, but the numbers of successful women are on the rise. There is an increasing number of women - and men - who are home-makers and hearth-keepers just because they want to be and because they can. The Feminine Mystique, written almost fifty years ago, uncovered the feminine mistake that made many of us believe that our identities were of value only in relation to our husbands and children. These days we know better, and young or old, female or male, we can pursue, pretty much without criticism, whatever kind of life makes us happy.
Ladies, let’s give ourselves a round of applause and pat on the back - we really are mah-velous!
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