How Creation Myths Shaped Our Society

Creation myth or patriarchal dominance? After studying multiple creation myths this week, our group could not ignore the large role that gender and age played in them. In the myths that our group studied; Brahma Creates the World, The creation of Memphis and Creation of Uganda a common factor was the presence of a male leader of some sort. Furthermore one of my group members explored this idea of gender inequality in the myth, Origin of the Japanese Islands, where heavenly deities say that because the female offspring born fist that the offspring was “not good”.

The ideas portrayed in Southeast Asian myths are still a large part of the culture there. I recently took a trip to Bali, Indonesia this past fall and had an interesting conversation with one of the tour guides there. She spoke to how difficult life is as a Balinese woman, she mentioned how society expects the woman to move to the husband’s family home and take care of and adapt to the family, while doing all the housework and possibly working as well. Wives are also expected to eat after their husbands are done eating, and no longer need anything. I found this interesting given the views supported by creation myths from that region. The creation myths all support the idea of female submission and sacrifice, which is notable in how wives are expected to act after marriage in Indonesia. The article below explores the current day inequality faced by many Indonesian women.

Indonesia Needs to Address Persistent Gender Inequality Problem

While researching how creation myths inspired gender inequality, I came across Doris Gascon’s exploration of Gender Socialization in Creation Myths. She noticed that in many creation myths men are created for a purpose, while women are created secondary or supplementary and primarily for men [1]. She also observed that the “archetypes of male legendary characters are god-like, while female legendary characters are made out of, from or by man”. This carries the message that women are not equal to men but rather created for men.

I believe that creation myths offer not only an explanation of how we came to be but where many of our societal norms came from. Furthermore, if those myths were changed to have female leaders and more feminist views it is likely that we would see a society where the power equilibrium would be skewed differently. While we have come a long way as a society in terms of equality, not limited to gender, there are still remnants of our centuries old worldview.

[1] Gascon, Doris. (2018). Gender Socialization in Creation Myths. International Journal of Culture and History (EJournal). 2. 10.18178/ijch.2016.2.2.043.