women's power

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 determined the course of events and

the forms of human culture. We originated,
founded, governed, prophesied, created great art,
fought for our rights, and for our peoples. These
are the women edited out of history, their stories
omitted, distorted, and replaced with an endless
litany of men (and the occasional queen or
meddling concubine). Our ignorance of these
women is greatly compounded by the omission of
information on societies which accorded females power in public life,
diplomacy, religion, medicine, the arts as well as family structure and
inheritance. Both racism and sexism are implicated in these silences and gaps.

So we need a remedial history that reconstructs the female dimensions of

human experience and achievement, and recovers the distorted and obliterated
past of Africa, the Americas, and all other regions neglected by the standard
textbooks and mass media. This will be a provisional history, because all the
facts are not in yet, and previous interpretations are being reevaluated for
gender, race, and colonial bias. More importantly, the indigenous oral histories
have only barely begun to be integrated into mainstream narratives.

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.

There's a striking interplay between women's spiritual and political leadership,

especially in many indigenous societies. I'm thinking of of the Evenki shaman
Olga who was both chieftain and religious leader of her Siberian village about a
century ago, and the machis of Chile, shamans who are deeply involved in the
Mapuche sovereignty effort. But this overlap occurs even in imperial contexts,
as when the aged mikogami Pimiko was chosen as ruler to save Japan from a
chaotic struggle for power in its early history. Another example would be the
important role the Candomblé maes de santo have played in the African-
Brazilian community since early modern times.

Priestesses or diviners have often led liberation movements: Nehanda

Nyakasikana in the Shona revolt against English colonization of Zimbabwe;
María Candelaria in the Maya uprising against the Spanish; and Toypurina in
the Gabrieleño revolt in southern California. In 1791, the old priestess Cécile
Fatiman inaugurated the Haitian revolution against slavery in a Vodun
ceremony in the Bois Caiman. Even earlier, the seeress Veleda was the guiding
force behind the Batavian insurrection of tribal Europeans against Rome, and
Dahia al-Kahina ("the priestess") led Berber resistance to the Arab conquest of
North Africa. And Gudit Isat (Judith the Fire) who overthrew the Axumite
empire in 10th century Ethiopia was remembered as a religious leader as well.

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.

This route of adopting a cloak of male privilege was followed by countless

female adventurers, including Carmen Robles who became a colonel in the
Mexican Revolutionary Army, and Elvira Cespedes, who practiced medicine
and married a woman in 16th-century Spain -- until she was denounced to the
Inquisition and sentenced to a long term confinement and forced labor.

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."

The most courageous women challenged oppression. The famous Swahili

singer Siti Binti Saad rose from the oppressed classes to make taarabu music
her vehicle calling for social justice in what is now Tanzania. She protested
class oppression and men's abuse of women; her song "The police have
stopped" sharply criticized a judge who let a rich wife-murderer go free. She
seemed unafraid even of the sultan. The battle leadership of a Pawnee elder
saved a village from atttackers, and so she was named "Old Lady Grieves the
Enemy." Afterward, she taunted wife-beaters, telling them to go after the
Poncas who came to burn up the village, and leave the women, who do no
harm, alone.

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.