Agnodice is one of those women whom history is in dispute about, and I personally believe this is mostly because so many of us find it hard to fathom the life of the independent woman from another time, or even from our own time. Though I hate to make generalizations, it's usually been men who I hear disputing Marija Gimbutas (whose work is now being rediscovered), who scoff at Amazons being any more than myth (tell that to the bones of Boudicca or the female Scythian warriors being dug out of the ground!), and who like to make statements such as "Well, 200 years ago, you couldn't vote in the US, and women didn't care" (which doesn't make sense given the fight for Suffragete rights, which had to be born somewhere!), or that we've never had control in religion, or else to say one of the most inaccurate and annoying things I've ever heard: "Well, men have to invent everything because of the way they're wired, and that's why women are stuck in the home -- because they want to be!" Tell that to the thousands of female inventors -- including those who invented language, made the first cave paintings, and wrote the first books ever known to history -- scholars, scientists, feminists, and other foremothers who kicked ass simply because there was a need to do so at the time.

Personally, when I think of all of the millions of women over the last 3 millenia (when foreign warfare seriously began trumping all other values) held back by patriarchy -- women whose inventions, ideas, passions and brilliance was either held back or else stolen by the men in their lives -- I am that much more detemined to make sure we know who the women are whose contributions are documented for the world to see. There is no excuse for holding back women -- or anyone of great potential -- for any reason. Babies will still be born, households will still function, and dudes will still get laid if the ladies are given their due. On the other hand, the more we hold one another back, smother one another's light and otherwise poison the well of ideas, the more we all lose as a people.

With these thoughts, I am reminded of Agnodice, a Greek woman of Athens born in the 3rd Century BC), who is said to be the first historical midwife as documented by Hyginus. Because women and slaves during Agnodice's time were not supposed to practice medicine, she decided to disguise herself as a man in order to study gynecology. By the time she was discovered -- the men she worked with became suspicious of the fact that women preferred her services over their own -- she was already quite successful, and the wives of Agnodice's male peers campaigned for her freedom to practice medicine in the open. This case reopened the doors for other women to re-join medical ranks (they flourished in ancient Greece before the 4th century BC) and brought a certain amount of notoriety to Agnodice.

The dispute over Agnodice is over the fact that the only historical record of her existence is by a man who lived nearly two centuries after his heroine was said to have mastered the art of gynecology. Given the scant historical records kept on women of note -- there are only small fragments of Sappho's poetry, for instance, and Enheduanna's fabulous religious writings in Egypt were treated with similar respect by patriarchal forces --  then I think it's probable that Agnodice's story, like that of the Amazons and other strong women, is a true one. Just because we can't fathom women setting themselves apart during that time (despite the fact that women do it all the time, and have for millenia) doesn't mean it didn't happen. It just means we can't wrap our minds around the humanity of those in the past, especially the women. Maybe we've seen too many movies, or we've been damaged by too many dull, dinky high school history lessons. I'm not sure where we got the idea that women could or couldn't do something based on the time they lived in. Where there's a will, there's a way.

Over the millenia, the work of women (and their families, though sometimes to a lesser degree) has been co-opted, destroyed, ridiculed or made to feel unimportant by various patricarchal forces seeking control. (For instance,  aside from Susan B. Anthony, can you even name a Suffragette?) Invaders burned libraries, destroyed art and artists, forbade native peoples to practice their religion or medical arts,  wrecked temples and local systems of government, and subjugated people in the name of domination and cornball visions of manifest destiny. Of course it's likely that Agnodice -- like her forgotten sisters before and after her -- existed; we just need to remember the context in which the one man who did remember her wrote her history for all to see.