WOMAN POWER!

WOMAN 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
thatinsist 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.