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The month of March has been set
aside to honor women. March is National Women’s History month.
March 8 is International Women’s Day. It is observed by women
around the world and has been adopted by the United Nations as a
universal day to honor women.
The observance of March 8 as Working Women’s Day can be traced back
to a march and demonstration in New York City in 1857. This
demonstration was staged by female garment and textile workers to
protest inhuman working conditions.
International Women’s Day was first proclaimed for this date at the
International Conference of Women in Helsinki, Finland in 1910.
We find our stories through the hallows of time;
Through the corridors, byways, and sidewalks of history.
Our stories jump out at us;
Taken by surprise
In their locked up corners;
Chained to the walls of the past of men.
They leap into presence,
Creating
Becoming
The true free past and present of women.
We reclaim, see our stories,
Through the cleansing (freeing)
Mirror of women’s history.
We have to begin with our own personal stories. Let me tell you
about a notebook of mine. When I was getting ready to leave New
Jersey and go to California to go to Starr King School, I found in
the attic a loose leaf notebook full of pages in my own writing,
pages I had written about 20 years earlier when I first went into
psychotherapy. I had difficulty talking so the therapist suggested
that I write down my thoughts and bring them in to discuss. The
interesting thing about the notebook is that the only pages left in
it were those that I decided not to show the therapist. I felt that
they were too confused, too crazy, and that he would not
understand. But as I read them over twenty years later I sat there
in the attic and cried. I was raising questions that a few years
later would be raised by many other women, and the questions were as
clear as they could be:
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Why am I expected to choose between a
family and a profession when men can have both?
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Why is there no place to leave my
children while I go to school?
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Why am I the only woman in my
neighborhood going to graduate school?
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Why am I the only woman in most of my
classes?
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Why is it healthy for me to be
dependent on my husband but not on my parents?
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Why is it wrong for me to want my own
money?
And on and on and on. I never
showed those pages to anyone. I hid them in the attic. I didn’t
trust my own experience. I thought I was crazy. No one else seemed
to be raising such questions in the nineteen fifties.
The great theologian Paul Tillich said that we have to find the
courage to be our authentic selves. Probably the most difficult
struggle I’ve had in my life has been to trust my own perceptions,
because the minute I say yes to myself and my own view of my
situation, I find that I am in conflict with almost everything
around me. And that’s scary.
We need to realize that all of our science, all of our history, all
of our literature, all of our art, all of our religions, all of our
philosophy, all of our government, all of our justice, all of our
goals, the very language we speak, have been written, designed and
constructed by and for the benefit of males. But male facts do not
always fit in with the empirical data of female experience. For
women to tap the power of authentic selfhood is to be painfully
aware of the myriad ways in which society works against the
expression of female experience.
Women’s experience for the most part has not been recorded. Where it was
recorded, it has often been erased or trivialized. Take another
well-known theologian, Ernst Troelstch, for example. Well-known
among theological students anyway. Early in the 20th
century he ended his long history of the Christian churches by
saying that the only religion possible for modern people would be
one based upon our own life experience. Who, me? My experience?
Well maybe not. I took a full semester course on the works of Ernst
Troelstch. The man wrote volumes and we read volumes and nowhere in
all that writing did he ever once mention women. So I said that one
day in class. Another student piped up and said, “No, you’re
wrong. On page 256 of volume 2 there’s a footnote where he mentions
women.”
Or the distinguished Professor of History from Columbia University.
He gave a brilliant lecture about how the American revolution was a
work in progress. His example was the vote—how originally only
people who owned land could vote, and only later did non-landowners,
then blacks and then Native Americans get the vote. Then he ended
his lecture and asked for questions. Of course I felt I had to ask
why he left out the rest of the story—the fact that women, half of
the population, were the last to get the vote.
Even a woman as well educated and as sensitive to women’s situation
as Simone de Beauvoir wrote in 1949: Woman have no past, no history
and no religion. She was wrong. We know now that women have a rich
past, an illustrious history and a great variety of religious
experience. It just hasn’t been taught in our schools.
I believe that all of us, women and men, need to know the female
half of our human heritage. One of the most enduring religions of
the ancient world, lasting over 2000 years, was that of the great
Mother-Daughter mysteries at Eleusis. Just absorb that for a
moment—the Mother-Daughter mysteries. That is not what we are
accustomed to hearing! We need very much to hear more about our
female roots. Of course it isn’t just our religious history we need
to know about, but all kinds of contributions to culture made by our
female ancestors. Here is a small sampling:
Ishtar, the Great
Goddess, giver and taker of life, revered for centuries in
Mesopotamia as She Who led us out of Chaos, as the Great Lawgiver,
as the Lady of Justice and Compassion.
Hatshepsut, mighty ruler
of the 18th dynasty of Egypt, who said: "My command
stands firm like the mountains, and the sun’s disk shines and
spreads rays over the titulary of mine august person, and my falcon
rises high above the royal banner unto all eternity."
Enheduanna, world’s earliest recorded poet, a priestess
of ancient Sumer, author of beautiful hymns to the Goddess Inanna.
Gomar, priestess of the Goddess Asherah and wife of the prophet
Hosea.
Sappho, lyric poet of ancient Greece and
renowned teacher of the arts of poetry, music and dance.
Hypatia, Roman scholar and philosopher, head of the university
at Alexandria.
Theodora, actress and Byzantine Empress.
Deeply concerned about the well-being of women, she issued a decree
making it illegal, punishable by death, to entice a woman into
prostitution, and she turned one of her palaces into a refuge where
prostitutes could go to start new lives. She passed laws protecting
women from mistreatment by their husbands, saw to it that women
could inherit property, and instituted the death penalty for rape.
Brigid, the fiery arrow, known in ancient Ireland as the Goddess of
fire and inspiration, of poetry, smithcraft and healing. When
Christianity came to Ireland in the 5th century her name
was given to an abbess who founded the first convent in Kildare.
She is known to Christians as St. Brigid. Young women gathered
around Brigid and founded a sisterhood devoted to teaching and
charity. It became a great center of learning where the arts
flourished. Beautiful illuminated manuscripts and exquisitely
crafted metalwork were produced.
Trotula of Salerno,
renowned physician, author and professor at the university. Her
book Diseases of Women was consulted for 700 years after her
death. She was the first doctor to give advice on the care of
newborn infants and throughout her writings she stressed hygiene,
cleanliness and exercise. When she died in 1097 her casket was
attended by a procession of mourners two miles long.
Petronilla de Meath, one of the first women to be tortured and
burned as a witch, in 1324. Despite the spread of Christianity
throughout Europe much of the local population clung to the
traditional worship of the Mother Goddess. These practices became
known as witchcraft and the Church became more and more threatened
by the power of these old religions. The extent of the witch
hunting craze was much wider than is commonly thought. Estimates
vary from one to six million people who were killed, mostly women.
The lights grew dim for women. And yet they continued to survive
and to achieve.
Hrosvitha,
Germany’s earliest poet and dramatist, the first playwright of
Medieval Europe. She studied Latin and Greek, philosophy,
mathematics and music. The keynote of her dramatic work was its
celebration of women.
Elizabeth I, Queen of England,
one of the greatest rulers of the Western world and among the most
erudite women of the 16th century. During the 45 years
of her reign the country prospered and grew and enjoyed a cultural
renaissance. She established the right to a fair trial, and
organized governmental relief for the old, the infirm and the poor.
Caroline Herschel, astronomer and one of the leading women of
science in the 18th and early 19th centuries.
First woman to discover a comet.
In 1798 the Royal Astronomical Society published two catalogs of
stars she had compiled and in 1825 she completed her own work by
presenting a star catalog of 2500 nebulae and clusters to the Royal
Society.
Sojourner Truth, abolitionist and feminist, a former slave who
traveled the country on foot lecturing on the evils of slavery and
the necessity for women’s rights. “Look at me!” she demanded.
“Look at my arm, it’s plowed and planted and gathered into barns and
no man could head me—and ain’t I a woman?”
Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, one of the giants of the 19th century
feminist movement, she devoted her life to the struggle for equal
rights, demanding education, suffrage and the reform of property and
divorce laws. She was one of the first to see that patriarchal
religion keeps women in bondage. She wrote: I do not believe that
God inspired the Mosaic code, or told historians what they say he
did about woman, for all the religions on the face of the earth
degrade her, and so long as woman accepts the position that they
assign her, her emancipation is impossible. Whatever the Bible may
be made to do in Hebrew or Greek, in plain English it does not exalt
or dignify woman.
Marie Sklodovska Curie, discoverer of radioactivity and
radioactive elements such as radium; winner of two Nobel prizes, one
in physics, one in chemistry; first woman to obtain a full
professorship at the Sorbonne She is one of my personal
favorites. I never learned about her in school. I learned about
her because a movie was made about her life and work.
Zora Neale Hurston, novelist and folklorist, dedicated to the
preservation of black culture. She traveled throughout the South
collecting folklore and mythology. She received a Guggenheim
Fellowship to pursue her work and published several collections,
novels and an autobiography.
Margaret Sanger, convener of an International Birth Control
Congress in 1925. Arrested repeatedly from the time she opened her
first birth control clinic in 1918. She lectured around the country
and insisted that without the right to control their own bodies, all
other rights for women are meaningless.
Eleanor Roosevelt,
distinguished First Lady, she created a bridge between the
Presidency and the people, with speaking tours, a newspaper column
and radio broadcasts. From 1945 to 1952 she was a delegate to the
United Nations Assembly and Chair of UNESCO’s Commission on Human
Rights. Because of her efforts the nations of the world made a
commitment to Human Rights. In 1949 she wrote about the process of
creating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She said, “One
significant change was made after very long debate, and that was the
decision to change Article 1…The original words read, ‘All men are
created equal.’ As it was finally worded it reads, ‘All human
beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.’” She
explains that the women on the committee felt that if the
Declaration said “All men” that it might easily be said that this
Declaration did not apply to women, and they wanted to make quite
clear that this was a Universal Declaration.
Let us rejoice in the Great Goddesses and the talented women of
ancient times. Let us praise the strong women who went before us in
modern times. Let us rejoice in the odyssey of woman, as we sing We
Are the Future.
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