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What does that mean? Women who openly display their power, knowledge,
and skill, receiving public recognition and honor. But also females who manage
to wield power in societies that try to limit it or decree female submission;
where their leadership is stigmatized and their creativity disdained. And women
who resist and overthrow oppressive traditions and regimes. Who break The
Rules in defiance of unjust legal and religious
"authorities." Who pursue their vision in spite of
the personal cost.
Women have often been relegated to the footnotes of history, and even those
are highly selective. As Sandra Cisneros wrote of her search for Latina sheroes,
"We are the footnotes of the footnotes." Yet the heritages of women of color,
especially the indigenous cultures, supply the most dramatic examples in recent
history of open embrace of female power. But even Europe looks different
when we look at the common women and encompass places like Bulgaria,
Estonia, Corsica, or Iberian Galicia.
Women's history demands a global perspective. There's far more to it than
Queen Elizabeth I or Susan B. Anthony. We need to refocus historical
attention from the school of "famous women" (often royal females) to
encompass broader groupings of women with power: clan mothers and
female elders; priestesses, diviners, medicine women and healers; market
women, weavers, and other female arts and professions. These "female spheres
of power," as I call them, vary greatly from culture to culture. Some of them,
particularly the spiritual callings, retain aspects of women's self-determination
even in societies that insist on formal subordination of female to male in private
and public space.
Often this female leadership does not rely on institutionalized authority, but on
recognized personal power. The Apache seer and warrior woman Lozen is
remembered for her acts of bravery and her clairvoyant ability to guide her
people away from danger as they fled Anglo settler armies in Arizona and into
Mexico. Granuaile Ní Mhaille (Grainne O' Mailley) surmounted the absolute
masculine monopoly of military and seafaring enterprise to become, through
her pirate fleet, the uncrowned "She-King" of the Connemara coast of Ireland,
and the scourge of the British Navy in the 1500s.
Female boldness has in many societies been required simply to defend personal
liberty and self-determination, carving out space to act in spite of patriarchal
constraints, to become what the English called "a woman at her own
commandment." Agodice practiced medicine in classical Athens disguised as a
man, risking the death penalty then in force against female physicians. About
two thousand years later, Miranda Stuart used the same strategy to get her M.D.
As Dr. James Barry, she became Chief Surgeon for the British Navy. Her
subterfuge was not discovered until her death, although she came close after
being wounded in a duel.
Female mavericks were also active in the arts and sciences. The renegade nun
Okuni originated the Kabuki theater, from which women were soon banned. In
Moorish Spain, the poet Walladah bint-al-Mustakfi rejected the veil and
marriage, preferring to host intellectual salons and take female as well as male
lovers. Around 975, her counterpart Aisa bint Ahmad declined a proposal by a
poet she disliked with a defiant stance: "I am a lioness/ And will never consent
to let/ My body be the stopping place for anyone/ But should I choose that/ I
would not hearken to a dog/ And how many lions have I turned down."
There are many historical accounts of women warriors, and women often
fought to defend their homes, their people and their country. However,
although it is hard for many people today to conceive of such broad female
authority, in some societies women had the formal power to veto the decision
to go to war. The Cherokee Beloved Woman, in her capacity of representing
the women at the men's council, possessed this authority, and so did the
Gantowisas (Matrons) of the Six Nations (Iroquois). It was the women who
supplied warriors with dried food and other necessities, and they suffered the
consequences of war as well. There was a saying, "Before the men can go to
war, the women must make their moccasins." (See Moccasin Makers and War
Breakers, below.)
The Lisu people of Yunnan (southwest China) once had a tradition that fighting
had to stop if a woman of either side waved her skirt to call for an armistice.
Often this would be a highly-regarded elder. The skirt, imbued with the
woman's mana, symbolized the life-giver's power. A woman taking off her
outer skirt was also the signal for war or peace in the Pacific island Vanatinai,
where women were also the traditional protectors of prisoners of war.