As an empowered female engineer, I can't help but wonder, after all the trials I've gone through to be financially and intellectually empowered (and there were many trials), what are the spiritual versus human roles men and women are meant to play? For example, most prophets are male. In addition, throughout history, at least written history, men are honored in positions of authority. Women's contributions are often hidden, under-emphasized, or destroyed. Socrates, for example, had a teacher named Aspasia, a female philosopher and lecturer. Socrates was a welder and Aspasia gave talks that famous and important people would travel miles to hear, including Socrates. She taught Socrates the art of rhetoric and he attributes his learning to her in much of his writing. But, all her writing was destroyed, no one in western philosophy departments mentions her, and she is mentioned on Wikipedia only as a consort and wife to a politician. If she was a man, the first thing everyone would write about her, even on Wikipedia, was that she was the teacher of Socrates. If she was a man, all of her works would be discussed and venerated.
How should women think about these examples? Why does women's work get destroyed or hidden through-out history? Are men meant to be in higher positions of authority -- as we clearly see with so many politicians, prophets, and powerful decision makers? What are the spiritual goals of women and the spiritual goals of men? Is there such a thing as the feminine and and masculine -- some people argue that feminine and masculine are taught to us and don't actually exist?
