Women's self concept and belief: A feminist approach to empowerment symbolism

Because most cultures use the metaphor of Male Godhead to legitimate male control of earthly objects, their women are led to internalise a self-image in which their natural purpose is read as the primary and ultimate bearers and carers of life. This cosmological task is defined as inferior, thus masking the fact that women develop an identity in which their self-evaluation includes the needs and contentment of others. Prevented from operating the same ethical values as their men, their minds and bodies mediate the pain caused to them and others by the limited moral responsibility required of men whose goals must be competitive and instrumental. The effort to articulate symbols to convey the female experience of personal identity as communal identity has involved the international women's movements to provide images unifying materials and spiritual purposes, and simultaneously to force men to see this as superior intersubjective praxis. Empowering women by asserting their interpersonal self-image as the norm is prerequisite for rationalising economic legal and scientific thinking.