Women's Share in Primitive Culture

A subtler question is, What are the views concerning the spirit world held in any tribe by the women as apart from the men? And we are bound to admit that the goddesses in the upper world are not only molded after earthly women by men, but were modelled by women after their own image -- that is, the beautiful conceptions of the ancient mythologies were as much the creation of women as of men. There is no time to work out this conception here, but on any theory of mythology and its origins there are points of view which women alone could assume and elements in the grouping which they alone could have contributed..

The psychological states of women, induced by many generations of inherited proclivities strengthened by use and seclusion, have also conspired to people their side of the heavenly world with some of its most distinguished and delightful inhabitants' have had a large share in the creation of primitive myths and cults' have left lurking around homes and well and fields myriads of clever fairies, have sent to bloom in the gardens of the gods some of their loveliest flowers.

Myths already made were carried in the same way, lent an borrowed from tribe to tribe. They would give color to the theory that there had been a common ground for all mythology

Woman's Share in Primitive Culture
Otis Tutton Mason
National American Woman Suffrage
Curator of the Department of Ethnology in the United States National Museum
1894