By Dr. A.C. Beyer

Why are there no female Buddhas or Mohammads or Jesuses? The main role that is still assigned to women is caring for children. That’s essentially a status that the peasant has. The peasant loves his animals, and cares for them, and they love him. But that’s where it ends. It means not partaking in anything, being excluded from everything, having no power whatsoever. In all areas of live, men dominate the picture. We did not even get a female US President, even if she was far more sane than the male counterpart.

Try to name 10 female writers, artists, philosophers, politicians as quickly as you can ten male. I promise you that you will fail. If not, please DO let me know.

Arguing with the biological imperative is futile. That is as if we were saying cancer or HIV are biological, hence we need to accept them and never do anything about them. It would be against God’s will to cure cancer! Just imagine that.

Where are the ideals of the enlightenment: of the equality of men? It should really read: The equality of humans. Otherwise, it becomes quickly misleading just to include males.

Where are the female goddesses of war, medicine, peace, or whatnot? Where is the equal representation of women in power? Where are the female superheroes? Popes? Gangsters? Artists? Why is it always the men?

The rational explanation is culture. Culture and ideology ask of women that their fulfilment is reproduction. What if a women decides that her fulfilment lies elsewhere? To become a second Artistotle, or Van Gogh? Or whatever?

Female reproduction still determines women to a life still chained to secondary duties, such as house work. But it doesn’t allow them to become more. And, in all fairness, what is the overall logic anyway? Where have the laments about overpopulation gone? If we can’t feed the world as it is now, why producing even more babies? And still, society exerts it’s pressure. To me, it resembles the idea that was dominant under German Fascism, of the ‘German mother’: the female who’s purpose it was to produce healthy babies that could become warriors or otherwise contribute to the survival of the state. She was not asked to produce female artists, or female philosophers, or become a philosopher or artist herself. That would probably have counted as ‘entarted’.

We need a complete rethink of gender roles. A lot is still to do. Even the most advanced thinkers are still male and do not progress sufficiently. We need to think of a world in which we have feminist religions, female goddesses, an equal representation of women in high power positions and in all other areas of life, a freedom of women from reproduction, and much more.

Hillary Clinton's failed bid for the US presidency was a defeat. But her candidacy was a true beginning. Sometime in the future, if women dare to dream, we will have true equality, as the ideals of the French revolution promised. We will have female leaders in all aspects of society and a freedom for every woman to determine her fate. 

Dr. AC Beyer is Senior Lecturer at the University of Hull. Her main publications include: Inequality and Violence (2014 Ashgate) and Violent Globalisms (2010 Ashgate).