Where does womanhood begin?

Not in temporary societal norms and beliefs, fleeting standards, and rules on femininity, conditioned by ideas (how), time (when), and space (where). 

What do women of ancient times or Renescance, from Bangladesh, Brazil, or London of today have in common throughout space and time? What does connect them beyond standards and opinions? What lays in a womanhood’s core?

While sociocultural constructs differ in places and times, the core of womanhood has always been the same, as it has always been – in plain sight invisible. A female cycle is a core of womanhood, the origin, purpose, and goal – all at once. 

Sadly, even in 2025, the female cycle gets inadequate attention. It has been overlooked, ignored, and stigmatized to the point that the new generations of women are no less oblivious than their grandmothers to the menstrual cycle’s transcendent meaning for their physical, mental, emotional, and social health or relationships.

The female cycle got quite a reputation. Only its ‘problematic’ reputation was given by oblivious to menstrual cycle male doctors and health researchers. The gender empathy gap was a reason women’s health was overlooked, ignored, misunderstood, and judged for being too much, and at the same time not enough. Undeserved shame was placed on women and the subject of natural female physical and emotional flow was silenced. Maybe partly because it was one of those subjects men felt deeply ignorant about. And no one wants to feel stupid, so we better don’t discuss it at all.

How much damage did this unfair treatment inflict on women’s healthcare, self-care, and self-perception so far? And how much longer will women feel misunderstood, ignored, and furious for lack of answers to their questions about “a shitshow of a womanhood” as one FB user wrote. 

Now, where does the womanhood go?

It seems to me that although for the last generations, we have been strongly persuaded to copy male testosterone linear ways and comply with linear expectations of behavior and convenient emotional states, now is a place and time to acknowledge and accept women’s natural estrogen ways, from menarch, first menstrual blood to menopause without diminishing women’s sense of self-worth.

On a bigger scale, for humankind as a specie a female estrogen cycle is no less meaningful than the male testosterone one. The estrogen menstrual cycle is vital beyond planning or avoiding pregnancies and childbearing. Understanding the menstrual cycle and the normal range of physical and emotional fluctuations should become a priority for healthcare providers and for every woman who bleeds – to stop applying testosterone norms, acknowledge their baseline of the norm, and stop old stigma and generational shame, and start curing the ill, not the well.