Gen. 1:27
1 Cor 14:34
Eph 5:19
Col 3:16
1 Tim 4:13
1 Tim 5:2
Titus 2:3, 4
1 Cor 11:3; cf. 1 Cor 15:28
Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath: Men stood by their fences and looked at the ruined corn, drying fast now, only a little green showing through the film of dust. The men were silent and they did not move often. And the women came out of the houses to stand beside their men—to feel whether this time the men would break. The women studied the men's faces secretly, for the corn could go, as long as something else remained. The children stood near by, drawing figures in the dust with bare toes, and the children sent exploring senses out to see whether men and women would break. The children peeked at the faces of the men and women, and then drew careful lines in the dust with their toes. Horses came to the watering troughs and nuzzled the water to clear the surface dust. After a while the faces of the watching men lost their bemused perplexity and became hard and angry and resistant. Then the women knew that they were safe and that there was no break. Then they asked, What'll we do? And the men replied, I don't know. But it was all right. The women knew it was all right, and the watching children knew it was all right. Women and children knew deep in themselves that no misfortune was too great to bear if their men were whole.
Masculinity and femininity are the more superficial aspects of being a man or a woman and it is quite possible to put on the trappings of masculinity without being truly male, or the trappings of femininity without being truly female. —Mary S. Calderone, “An Approach,” in Sex Educations: Issues and Directives.
On women (Eves) as life givers: [Women] possess a capacity to endure adversity and “to keep life going even in extreme situations” and hold on “tenaciously to the future” (Congregation For The Doctrine Of The Faith, Letter to Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World, 31 May 2004, 13.).