For millennia, the world has behaved as though a woman’s womb were its entitlement, a resource to be regulated by men, monitored by religion, and moralised by traditions that never asked for her consent. The womb has been drafted into service for patriarchal lineage, national agendas, and theological fantasies, while the woman herself has been relegated to the margins of her own biology. This essay confronts that legacy head-on. It dismantles the myth of equal contribution in reproduction, exposes the long history of womb-colonisation by religious and political powers, and challenges the cultural complacency that disguises control as virtue. What follows is not a plea but a declaration: the womb belongs to the woman alone, and any system that claims otherwise, be it divine or secular, must be interrogated, resisted, and ultimately transformed.

I am a WOMAN.

This personal questioning is not just mine; it echoes across centuries of women whose bodies were treated as public property.

Throughout history, the roles of men and women in society have often been shaped by deeply ingrained beliefs and biological metaphors. Just as a farmer depends on both fertile land and quality seeds to produce a healthy crop, humanity depends on the balance and mutual contribution of both women and men to thrive. A woman’s womb can be likened to the land, nurturing, sustaining, and giving life, while a man’s sperm represents the seed, carrying the potential for creation. If the seeds are healthy but the land is barren, the harvest will be poor; and if the land is fertile but the seeds are weak, the result will be equally disappointing. True abundance, both in nature and in human society, requires the strength of both. Yet, for centuries, society has celebrated the seed while neglecting the land, praising male dominance and productivity while overlooking the health of women and devaluing their vital role. Feminism, therefore, arises not as a call for superiority, but as a demand for balance, a recognition that progress, equality, and prosperity can only flourish when both genders are equally valued, freed, empowered, and respected.

If we were to examine the creation of life through a lens of fairness and proportion, it becomes evident that the contribution of women has long been underestimated. Consider a symbolic formula: 25 parts sperm, 25 parts egg, and 50 parts female womb. In this equation, a man contributes 25 percent through his sperm, the seed of life, while a woman contributes in two profound ways. First, she provides the egg, which carries an equal 25 per cent weight, symbolizing her biological partnership in conception. Yet her second contribution, far greater and more enduring, lies in the sanctuary she offers, her womb. This “land” nurtures the growing life for nine months, providing warmth, sustenance, and protection, an act that constitutes the remaining 50 percent. Thus, in the total process of life’s creation, the woman’s contribution rises to 75 per cent, not only biologically but also emotionally and spiritually, whereas man's contribution remains 25 per cent out of 100 per cent. Despite this overwhelming share, society has often refused to acknowledge her full role, instead glorifying the seed while minimizing the sacred ground that allows it to flourish. The woman’s body becomes both the vessel and the environment of life, a living testament to endurance, sacrifice, and creation itself. It is therefore time that humanity reevaluates its notions of contribution and credit. Recognising the woman’s predominant role in the miracle of birth is not a gesture of favour, it is an act of justice, of giving due acknowledgment where it has long been denied. This realisation forms the heart of modern feminism: the insistence that women’s labour, whether physical, emotional, or intellectual, must be seen, valued, and honoured as central to the continuation and progress of humanity.

The law of demand and supply, a foundational concept in economics, can also be observed in the social and moral valuation of human life. According to this rule, when a product becomes overly abundant in the market, its value diminishes; conversely, when it is scarce yet desired, its value rises. This same principle can be metaphorically applied to the production of human life. In an age when overpopulation grips much of the world, the act of motherhood, once regarded as sacred and central to the continuity of civilization, has been subtly devalued. The abundance of life itself has, paradoxically, lessened the individual worth of both the mother and the child in society’s perception. When every street, city, and nation overflows with people, the miracle of birth becomes commonplace, losing the reverence it once inspired. Despite the progress made by feminism, this economic-like imbalance continues to influence the social standing of women. In many societies, women are still measured by the number of children they bear rather than the quality of life they help create. As a result, the profound act of giving life, a contribution that once defined human continuity, has been reduced to a statistic in the equation of population growth.

To restore balance and reawaken respect for motherhood, the world must embrace the wisdom of moderation. Just as scarcity increases value in economics, restraint in reproduction can restore dignity and worth in human relationships. When women choose to produce fewer children, they reclaim control over their bodies and destinies, turning motherhood from an expectation into a conscious, empowered choice. A smaller population not only enhances the quality of life for individuals but also amplifies the social and moral value of each human being. In a world where every birth is intentional and celebrated, the mother’s contribution regains its true stature. She becomes not just a producer of life, but a custodian of humanity’s future. This perspective transforms feminism from a movement of resistance into one of reconstruction, encouraging societies to respect women not merely as bearers of children, but as intelligent agents capable of shaping demographic and moral equilibrium. By limiting quantity and elevating quality, both life and motherhood recover their sacred worth, reminding the world that abundance without meaning breeds neglect, but conscious creation breeds reverence and respect.

The history of human civilization is, in many ways, the history of control, control over land, over knowledge, and most insidiously, over the human body. Among all forms of control, the colonisation of the woman’s womb by patriarchy and religion stands as one of the most enduring and deeply entrenched. For centuries, the womb has not been seen as a private, autonomous space belonging to the woman herself, but as a social and religious institution regulated by external forces, men, priests, prophets and laws. Patriarchal systems dictated that a woman’s worth was tied to her reproductive capacity, reducing her to a vessel for lineage, inheritance, and divine command. Religions, too, sanctified this control, disguising it as virtue and duty, declaring that women must “be fruitful and multiply” to fulfill divine will. But what was once considered sacred obedience has now become a burden in a world where science, medicine, and technology have fundamentally altered the conditions of human survival. The womb that once served as a vessel for humanity’s continuity must now become a symbol of resistance, a territory reclaimed by women themselves. Feminism, in its truest form, must not only seek political and economic equality but must also wage an intellectual and ethical struggle for the emancipation of the womb from centuries of imposed servitude.

In the modern age, the logic of unrestrained reproduction that once had survival value has turned into a global dilemma. Epidemics that once ravaged populations are now curbed by advanced medicine, infant mortality has plummeted, and life expectancy has soared. Yet, the old religious exhortations to “multiply” persist as cultural echoes that no longer serve humanity’s needs. The world now faces the consequences of this outdated ideology: overpopulation, resource scarcity, ecological collapse, and economic inequality. The irony is profound; the very medical and scientific progress that saved lives has exposed the unsustainability of blind procreation. Therefore, it is not only a woman’s right but also her moral responsibility to decide when and whether to bring new life into the world. The liberation of the womb from patriarchal and religious dogma represents the liberation of human reason itself. Women must now listen not to the decrees of ancient prophets, but to the insights of modern science, philosophy, and ethics, which recognise choice, consent, and sustainability as the true moral imperatives. Feminism’s ultimate frontier lies in transforming motherhood from a duty to a choice, from compulsion to creation, and from colonisation to sovereignty, a revolution of the womb that redefines the future of humanity. 

The Womb of the Mind: The Renaissance of Feminism 

For millennia, human civilisation has been shaped by the creations of the mind more than the creations of the body. Empires, sciences, religions, and philosophies did not arise from biological reproduction, but from visionary individuals whose brilliance reshaped the destiny of millions. Jesus, Osho, Isaac Newton, Nikola Tesla, Immanuel Kant, Baruch Spinoza, Christopher Marlowe, Charles Lamb, Mother Teresa, Emily Dickinson, Jane Austen, Plato, Leonardo da Vinci, David Hume, Blaise Pascal, Florence Nightingale, Hypatia of Alexandria, Søren Kierkegaard, Emily Brontë, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, R. W. Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, Ramanujan, John Keats, Giordano Bruno, Epicurus, Diogenes of Sinope, Zeno of Citium, Zhuangzi, Mary Astell, Harriet Martineau, Edith Södergran, Fernando Pessoa, Willa Cather, Octavia Butler, Marcel Proust, Gustave Flaubert, Anton Chekhov, Samuel Beckett, E. M. Forster, Jean-Paul Sartre, Hannah Arendt, Susan Sontag, Michel Foucault, Simone de Beauvoir, and Zaha Hadid did not leave behind children of flesh; they left behind children of thought—ideas that outlived dynasties and carved the architecture of human morality. Yet the ranks of these intellectual ancestors have been overwhelmingly dominated by men, not because women lacked the capacity for such creation, but because patriarchal structures confined their energy to the biological womb at the expense of the metaphysical one. The time has come for feminism to open a new chapter—one where women reclaim not only the right to their bodies, but also the right to become sovereign creators of knowledge, culture, and spiritual frameworks.

In ancient traditions across the world, we find precedents for this shift. The sages of India, Ashtavakra, Kapila, Vyasa, often took vows of detachment, and some married without choosing to reproduce, devoting their lives to the expansion of consciousness rather than the expansion of lineage. Their legacies survive as philosophies, not family trees. The Greek Pythagoreans, early Christian desert mothers like Syncletica of Alexandria, and medieval Islamic scholars such as Rābiʿa al-Adawiyya represent a similar pattern: individuals, occasionally women but mostly men, who renounced the conventional path of parenthood to pursue intellectual or spiritual illumination. Meanwhile, mythologies reveal symbolic counterparts: Athena, born from Zeus’s head, represents wisdom unbound by physical birth; Saraswati, goddess of knowledge, is revered not for motherhood but for the creation of arts and sciences; Tara in Buddhist tradition responds to the suffering of beings not through womb-born children but through enlightened action. These figures offer a symbolic lineage for a new generation of women whose primary medium of creation may be the mind rather than the body.

The world today is entering an epoch in which human survival depends not on the quantity of births but on the quality of ideas. We face ecological collapse, overpopulation, technological upheaval, and moral fragmentation, challenges that require philosophers, scientists, ethicists, and spiritual innovators more urgently than they require biological reproduction. It is within this global context that feminism must evolve. Some women may choose to forgo motherhood not as a rejection of femininity, but as a higher expression of it: a conscious diversion of creative energy from the biological womb to the intellectual one. Others may marry for love, companionship, or sexuality, yet remain childfree to preserve the time and mental clarity needed for research, invention, or public leadership. These choices do not diminish womanhood; they expand it.

This emerging category of women thinkers, philosophers, scientists, futurists, theologians, and cultural architects, may eventually form a sisterhood akin to the ancient monastic orders, but oriented toward innovation rather than renunciation. Instead of monasteries in forests, they might gather in research institutes, writing retreats, or global networks of scholarship. Their mission would be to articulate new systems of ethics, new spiritualities, new social frameworks shaped by female experience and female intellect. If Jesus preached compassion, and Buddha enlightenment, these women could preach autonomy, sustainability, relational intelligence, and the sanctity of choice. Not a religion of dogma, but a philosophy of liberation grounded in the understanding that womanhood contains multitudes: the power to gestate life, and the power to gestate ideas.

Yet this chapter of feminism does not elevate one path above another. Rather, it argues that humanity needs both wombs, the biological womb that creates bodies and the intellectual womb that creates civilisations. Women who choose motherhood contribute through the deep emotional, ethical, and biological labour that sustains humanity’s continuity. Women who choose intellectual creation contribute through breakthroughs that reshape humanity’s trajectory. Both are sacred. Both demand recognition. And both require freedom: freedom from compulsion, from patriarchal expectation, from the ancient belief that a woman’s value lies solely in the children she bears.

This new feminism also draws inspiration from modern thinkers as well: Simone de Beauvoir’s insistence that woman is not destiny; Audre Lorde’s call for self-definition; Vandana Shiva’s ecological warnings; Donna Haraway’s challenge to reimagine human futures; Bell Hooks’ vision of love as political transformation. These voices, combined with the lineage of ancient sages and mythic archetypes, form the foundation for a feminine-led intellectual renaissance, one that reframes creation as a dual possibility: life through the womb, or worlds through the mind. At its heart, this chapter calls for a shift in how society measures women’s contributions. A woman who births a child shapes a life; a woman who births an idea shapes an era. Both deserve honor. Both require profound effort. And both are legitimate expressions of human creativity. The next era of feminism invites women to choose freely between these paths, or to walk both, without shame, pressure, or limitation. It affirms that the highest calling of womanhood is not reproduction, but sovereignty. Sovereignty of mind. Sovereignty of destiny. Sovereignty of creation itself.

A bold and provocative possibility emerges in the next 1,000 years when imagining the future of spiritual leadership: that the first widely recognised female prophetess of the modern era may arise from within the Muslim world. This is not because Muslim women are inherently destined for such a role, but because the intense social, cultural, and ideological constraints many of them face create the conditions for profound inner transformation. When a society places women under strict coverings, restricts their visibility, or reduces their identity primarily to reproduction, it unintentionally cultivates a deep interior world, a reservoir of reflection, resilience, and spiritual intensity. History shows that great prophets, thinkers, and revolutionaries often arise from environments of pressure rather than comfort. From within the very structures that seek to contain them, a new voice may emerge, powerful precisely because it has wrestled with silence, authoritative because it has confronted limitation, and transformative because it has seen, from the inside, the urgent need for a new moral and spiritual horizon. Such a prophetess, should she appear, would not only speak for Muslim women but for women everywhere, embodying the universal struggle for dignity, autonomy, and spiritual sovereignty.

At last, the question of the womb, of flesh or of thought, returns to the only place it ever truly belonged: the woman who carries it. For centuries, her body has been a battlefield and her mind a silence, yet both have endured, waiting for the moment when creation could finally become a choice instead of a command. Today, as the world trembles under the weight of its own excess, its crowded cities, its inherited dogmas, its exhausted myths, a new form of womanhood rises, one that refuses to be reduced to reproduction or restrained by tradition. She may bear children or she may bear ideas, may cradle life or may cradle revolutions, but whatever she creates will arise from the sanctity of her consent. The future will be shaped not by the wombs that were controlled, but by the wombs, literal and metaphorical, that were reclaimed. And when women finally stand as the undisputed authors of their bodies, their minds, and their destinies, humanity will discover that the truest prophecy was always this: that liberation begins where ownership returns.

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