Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy. I'm Amy McPhee Allivest. Today we are going to discuss another of GERDA Learner's contributions to women's history.

It's a logical follow-up to her book, The Creation of Patriarchy, which showed the way human beings instituted societal structures wherein men ruled women, from prehistory to the time of the Greeks.

The creation of feminist consciousness picks up right about where the creation of patriarchy

leaves off at the beginning of the common era. And it continues through the 19th century.

But before we start, I'd like to introduce my reading partner for today, Jeanette Canary.

Hi, Jeanette. Hi, Amy.

Jeanette, I think you have our first point. Yes, and here's our first point. Women absorb the messages of their own inferiority. This is what Gertr-Learner says about this point. The fact that women were denied knowledge of the

existence of women's history decisively and negatively affected their intellectual development as a

group. Women who did not know that others like them had made intellectual contributions to knowledge and to

creative thought were overwhelmed by the sense of their own inferiority, or conversely, the sense

of the dangers of their daring to be different. Without knowledge of women's past, no group of women could test their own ideas

against those of their equals, those who had come out of similar conditions and similar life situations.

Every thinking woman had to argue with a great man in her head, instead of being strengthened

and encouraged by her four mothers.

For thinking women, the absence of women's history was perhaps the most serious obstacle

of all to their intellectual growth. So interestingly, rereading this quote right now just makes me wonder what it would be like for us as women.

If we didn't have to overcome this sense of inferiority, if we just knew that the words we had to say would be readily accepted and would not even be questioned. And I'm realizing,

I think that's what it's like for men. Right. So she does give us written evidence from as early as

the eighth century of women experiencing the sense of inferiority. She writes about Hugerborg, a nun who settled in Germany

in 762. Hugerborg was educated and well known in her time for writing two biographies

about two brothers, a bishop and an abbot. Her biography for the abbot also chronicled the conversion of the Germans and

Franks to Christianity. Therefore, her work is considered to be a historical text. Yet, despite her

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