The Evolutionary Woman

"The women and the men of Native America are busy rebuilding their traditions, and the one most in need of rebuilding at this time is the way of the mothers and the grandmothers, the sacred way of the women. When Grandmother returns (and she's coming soon) we want to be ready; we intend to be ready...we are busily stealing the thunder back, so it can empower the fires of life we tend, have always tended, as it was ever meant to." — Paula Gunn Allen, 1939–2008, Native American poet, writer, educator

The time has come to take the next evolutionary step. The Evolutionary Woman is a clarion call, exhorting women to extend their natural feminine gifts past 20th-century supportive participation to move into 21st-century forefront positions of leadership. The leadership of the feminine in all areas of social concern has been gestating for millennia; now, in the 21st century, its moment of birth has arrived. Women of every generation, race, nationality, and ability are poised in potential, waiting for a cue to answer the impelling call of evolution. The Evolutionary Woman, a modern myth for our times, provides that powerful cue that will "encourage" women to get up off the couch of complacency, emerge out of the house of security, and move boldly out into the streets of social leadership. The time has come to honor the feminine heart in every aspect of human endeavor and industry, to no longer tolerate the diminishment or dismissal of the natural capabilities of women. We introduce the evolutionary woman, as imaginal cell, into the social field as the global innovator of conscience. It is time to take the next evolutionary step. In order to revive our failing humanity, we must restore the balanced symmetry of our civilization by strengthening the feminine within both genders. To refresh the long-established feminine traditions of nurturing, networking, and negotiating, we introduce the mythic evolutionary woman as the essential innovator and global model of conscience. The time has come to take the next evolutionary step. It is time for the 21st-century mothers of nations—the “Everywoman”—to become the leaders of nations.