On Woman and Man: a woman without her man is nothing

Found posted on my new Facebook friend Sam's FunWall:

"The world of humanity is possessed of two wings: the male and the female. So long as these two wings are not equivalent in strength, the bird will not fly." The Promulgation of Universal Peace: Talks Delivered by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá during His Visit to the United States and Canada in 1912, p. 375. Photo uploaded on October 8, 2006 by aaardvaark on flickr, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic.

The status of woman in former times was exceedingly deplorable, for it was the belief of the Orient that it was best for woman to be ignorant. It was considered preferable that she should not know reading or writing in order that she might not be informed of events in the world. Woman was considered to be created for rearing children and attending to the duties of the household. If she pursued educational courses, it was deemed contrary to chastity; hence women were made prisoners of the household. The houses did not even have windows opening upon the outside world. Bahá’u’lláh destroyed these ideas and proclaimed the equality of man and woman. He made woman respected by commanding that all women be educated, that there be no difference in the education of the two sexes and that man and woman share the same rights. In the estimation of God there is no distinction of sex.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá, 2 June 1912, Talk at Church of the Ascension, Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street, New York, in The Promulgation of Universal Peace, US Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1982 second edition, Page: 166