There has been a trend of late, it would seem, to discuss and explore not only feminism but also the role of women more generally, both in the domestic sphere of the home and in the public square. The “tradwives” phenomenon as seen on social media has people talking, both those whose imaginations are positively captured by this carefully curated and lovely dress-wearing iteration of womanhood, and those who speak of what they perceive as its shortcomings and dangers. Men and women alike continue to grapple, debate, and ask the most simple of questions: what does it, in fact, mean to be a woman?
A clear manifestation of this tension was the seemingly bimodal reaction to Cabrini, Alejandro Gómez Monteverde’s 2024 biographical film about the life of the famous Italian saint. The religious tenor (or lack thereof, as some critics have suggested) of the film was not the only problem some Catholics had: a number of viewers wondered if the movie depicted St. Frances Xavier Cabrini as too ambitious, too aggressive, and ultimately too feminist. The movie version of the woman simply embodied, some claimed, too much “girl power.”
Regardless of where a Catholic stands on this issue, it is fair to say that it is an issue, and a very important one at that. To pretend that the question of womanhood is settled, either on a personal level or on a broader cultural scale, is to ignore the clear signs, the vigorous combox debates, and the canon of cultural expression spanning from books to podcasts to social media. What is a woman’s place, we ask? What is it to be authentically female, to embrace the role of mother (or is there a role to begin with?), and does biology have anything whatsoever to do with what a woman—single or married—ought to do?
In promising to free women from the shackles of a vague and loosely defined notion of patriarchy, it instead robs women of the very dignity, mystery, and glory of womanhood itself.
In Joan Didion’s 1972 New York Times essay titled “The Women’s Movement,” the writer explores the modern feminist movement, conceptualizing it as an attempted societal revolution marked by “half-truths,” “self-loathing,” and “bitter fancies.” The piece was considered controversial at the time (and remains so), because it was highly critical of secular feminism’s aims and achievements, even going so far as to explicitly compare the modern women’s movement to Marxism. Didion focuses on the ideological aspects of the women’s movement and, consequently, its limitations: in the end, she concludes that modern adherents to feminism are less concerned about the true oppression of some women (Didion argues that something cannot really be true of all women), and are instead interested in what ultimately amounts to a return to childhood. The so-called “Peter Pan Syndrome” is, according to Didion, alive and well among modern feminists.
Didion argues her point by describing feminist women who decry such things as motherhood and cooking, but who then instead extol self-interested pursuits like pottery and moving to New York City. “The childlike resourcefulness . . . bewilders the imagination. The astral discontent with actual lives, actual men, the denial of the real generative possibilities of adult sexual life, somehow touches beyond words.”
What Ms. Didion has managed to articulate in this essay is the ultimate problem with so much of what secular feminism (read: feminism unmoored from moral or ethical considerations) has to offer: in promising to free women from the shackles of a vague and loosely defined notion of patriarchy, it instead robs women of the very dignity, mystery, and glory of womanhood itself. “All one’s actual apprehension of what it is like to be a woman,” writes Didion, “the irreconcilable difference of it—that sense of living one’s deepest life underwater, that dark involvement with blood and birth and death—could now be declared invalid, unnecessary, one never felt it at all” (emphasis added).
It is precisely this “sense of living one’s deepest life underwater”—not the washing of dishes, the decision of whether or not to pursue a career, or the caring for one’s small children—that paradoxically encapsulates and illumines the matter of womanhood. The hidden, unseen, supernatural reality of what it is to be a woman, of what she accomplishes, and of her contributions to her home, to her community, and to the greater world, is another thing entirely—and that is precisely the point.
Yet both sides—on the one, progressive militant feminists and, on the other, conservative religious traditionalists—miss the forest for the trees. To both groups, disparate as they are, true womanhood is defined by alternately doing or not doing specifically defined things within a particular sphere. Secular feminists, for their part, reject more historically traditional feminine roles. They declare and wage war against female biology in an attempt to achieve self-actualization, here in the form of suppressing or destroying the potential for “the real generative possibilities of adult sexual life” that Didion so eloquently articulates. Alternately, religious traditionalists not only conceptualize of the ideal woman as one who limits herself to work within the domestic sphere, but relegate the concept of womanhood to a narrow set of tasks and checklists rooted not so much in biology (certainly a man can physically wield a mop and bake a cake as easily as a woman), but in stereotypes and tropes.
Both sides are rigid and unyielding, it turns out, and yet ultimately neither side goes far enough.
And this is because while both man and woman are created in the image of God, each bringing unique and profound gifts to the world, they are equal but not the same. Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, our first father Adam said upon meeting our first mother Eve—and yet her biological makeup was complementary to his, and included among other things the astonishing capacity for carrying, birthing, and then nourishing new life. Additionally, the way a woman generally nurtures and loves is distinct from a man’s. She brings this particularity to everything she does, whether it be within the home or in the public sphere, precisely and simply because she is a woman. Womanhood is a mysterious and profound biological reality, rooted in creation by a personal and loving God. Far from being defined by an amalgamation of personality traits, individual interests, or specific tasks, to be a woman is in reality an ontological claim.
It is, as Joan Didion says, the sense of living one’s deepest life underwater.
Edith Stein—who is a Jewish convert to Catholicism; a canonized, martyred saint; and otherwise known by her religious name, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross—wrote a number of essays about women in the 1930s. The first European woman to earn a doctorate in philosophy, Stein was both an intellectual long steeped in the ideas of secular feminism and a faithful Catholic who went on to reject such notions in favor of a Catholic ethos. “The world doesn’t need what women have, it needs what women are,” wrote Stein. Again referring to women, Stein also wrote that whether “she is a mother in the home, or occupies a place in the limelight of public life, or lives behind quiet cloister walls, she must be a handmaid of the Lord everywhere . . . then would each fulfill her feminine vocation no matter what conditions she lived in and what worldly activity absorbed her life.”
Avoiding the common pitfalls of both secular feminists and conservative traditionalists, Edith Stein advocated that regardless of the specific conditions or activity that marked the life of a woman—certainly throughout various times, places, and amidst wildly different socioeconomic conditions this has varied—she could successfully fulfill her feminine vocation through being what Stein called “a handmaid of the Lord.” A life wholly devoted to Christ, to vocation, and ultimately to love would be one in which a woman’s femininity would quite naturally be manifested. Regardless of how she might spend her waking hours, she would be living out the ontological reality of her womanhood, of her “deepest life.”
In his ever-relevant 1995 “Letter to Women,” Pope St. John Paul II dares to address what makes women unique and complementary in their approach to the world. Far from taking a limiting, rigid, or narrow view on either side, the former pontiff opens wide the door for women to reach their potential and explains how they do this.
Both sides—on the one, progressive militant feminists and, on the other, conservative religious traditionalists—miss the forest for the trees.
“Perhaps more than men,” writes the saint, “women acknowledge the person, because they see persons with their hearts. They see them independently of various ideological or political systems. They see others in their greatness and limitations; they try to go out to them and help them. In this way the basic plan of the Creator takes flesh in the history of humanity and there is constantly revealed, in the variety of vocations, that beauty—not merely physical, but above all spiritual—which God bestowed from the very beginning on all, and in a particular way on women.”
Never has it been more vitally important to develop a framework for understanding what womanhood is and isn’t. Our polarized culture, both inside and outside of the Catholic Church, is struggling to find a path forward, and to regain a robust and meaningful view on women. Everyone seems to sense that the very dignity of women is at stake, and yet both extremes miss the mark in their prescribed solutions.
The problem with an aggressive secular feminism is that in denigrating any work a woman might be compelled to perform within the confines of the home, it fails to start with the most basic of questions: what is a woman? In the end, the modern women’s movement stops short of exploring femininity and womanhood in any meaningful, practical way. Instead of helping women to integrate their lives and become whole, this movement pits warring aspects of womanhood against themselves: a desire for motherhood versus a longing to create something for the world, the need for love, relationship, and community versus a rich and satisfying intellectual life. Women are ultimately left unfulfilled and, oftentimes, uncomfortable in their own skin—occasionally resulting in them identifying as men.
And yet the “traditional wife” trope so prevalent on social media today—surely and understandably existing in response to the overarching, unquestioning cultural acceptance of radical feminism—also fails to satisfy. Reducing womanhood to kitchen skills, a handful of demure personality traits, and a certain sort of wardrobe results in little more than play-acting and superficiality. It misses the mystery, the strength, and the very dignity of women that both Edith Stein and Pope St. John Paul II intuitively understood. Worse yet, such a limited concept of womanhood ironically ignores the fierce love and sacrificial self-gift that marks the feminine approach to vocation and to life. Traditional women may be checking off the boxes, but are they truly any more fulfilled than their secular feminist counterparts?
And yet, to be a woman is to embody a great and beautiful mystery. It is to reject both the fragmented, modern secular vision of personhood and the rigid, performance-based approach typical of traditionalists. It is to instead lay claim to a vast and complex complementary reality—a reality created by God himself, and one which he called good. This paradigm allows space both for women like the strong, bold heroine in the film Cabrini, and for homeschooling mothers dedicated to cooking, cleaning, and educating their children.
When we view womanhood from this integrated and holistic angle—both thoroughly Catholic and thoroughly applicable to all women everywhere—and when we rightly acknowledge the dignity, the imago dei, and the mystery of “living one’s deepest life underwater,” we suddenly are capable of rising above the many controversies and debates. Our vision becomes clear and focused when we move past the superficialities of both extremes and embrace the true ontological meaning and beauty of womanhood.