7 Women

Seven Women
And the Secret of Their Greatness
By Eric Metaxas

"Each of the world-changing figures who stride across these pages-Joan of Arc, Susanna Wesley, Hannah More, Maria Skobtsova, Corrie ten Boom, Mother Teresa, and Rosa Parks-is an exemplary model of true womanhood."

Several years ago, I reviewed "Seven Men", and I thought, I hope Eric writes one for women. It appears that I was not the only one. As I read the forward to the book, I was excited for the dragster shout outs as the granddaughter of a dragster. (Shirley Muldowney! Whoot, whoot!)
And then I was convicted AND encouraged by what he wrote about praising women when they are compared to men, and achieve manly things.
Debbie Stoller, editor of the feminist magazine, Bust, wrote in her book Stitch and B*tch, something similar. How we praise women for being mechanics, pilots, and are employed in other typically "male" jobs, but we condemn them for doing the things their mothers and grandmother's did. This places the sees in competition with eachother. This attitude is also amongst women, comparing and competing with eachother. I experienced this most harshly when I lived in the Greater Washington DC area, where every one was a professional something. I was there, having 3 kids, the oldest being 2 1/2 yrs old. Women would stop me on the street, strangers and yell at me for "breeding".
I was encoyraged by Eric Metaxas' statement, "This thinking pretends to put men and women on equal footing, but it actually only put them against each other in a zero-sum competition in which they usually tear each other down. When I consider the seven women I chose, I see that most of them were great for reasons that derive precisely from there being women, not in spite of it; and what made them great has nothing to do with there being measured against or competing with men. In other words, their accomplishments are not gender-neutral but are rooted in their singularity as women. All of them existed and thrived as women and stand quite apart from anything touching the kind of thinking I encountered."

The women chosen are great not in spite of their feminity, but because of it. He also calls out men, to use their strengths to bless others and not to harm and victimize others.

" But in humbling ourselves in that way we ironically gain a far greater objectivity and a far better vantage point from which we see things. May the true stories of these 7 great women help you see yourself and your own time and the world all the more clearly."

Buy this book, for your daughters, your sisters, your selves.