Dale Allen author of “In Our Right Minds” presents a thoroughly cultivated explanation of how societal norms and educational systems create an imbalanced sense of self through the domination of the left brain-male dominated hemisphere when compared to the right brain-female dominated.

The intelligence of the right brain is a part of all of us, and we are all using it more in every day life as we enter an era wherein right-brain skills are increasingly prized. Yet we live in a culture that is still left-brain dominant. In cultures that value strengths of the right brain, feminine power is celebrated.

The intelligence of the right brain is a part of all of us, and we are all using it more in every day life as we enter an era wherein right-brain skills are increasingly prized. Yet we live in a culture that is still left-brain dominant. The realm of the left hemisphere (the “masculine hunter/killer” side) is logical, linear, abstract, sequential, analytical, literal and functional. To read and write, we use the skills of the left hemisphere. The right realm (the “feminine gatherer/nurturer” side) includes intuition, creativity, metaphor, poetry, empathy, dreams, art and synthesis. This hemisphere comes into play as we contemplate images and the world around us. While the left hemisphere of the brain conceives of life as generally an I am experience, separate from all else, the right hemisphere of the brain experiences reality as frequencies, energies and patterns a totality in which we are all connected. Through three million years of evolution, the two hemispheres developed to work in perfect balance, and yet our culture has favored left-brain skills and values.


In cultures that value strengths of the right brain, feminine power is celebrated. In a survey of 150 cultures today, anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday compared cultures structured around male dominance with those that embrace female power. She found a clear correlation between female power in society and the Goddess veneration found in these cultures. Where the divine has a feminine face, there is a correlation with the societys honoring of nature, womens role as officiators of sacred sacraments, connection to the land, and female power. In these rightbrain integrated societies, there is egalitarianism, rather than women holding power over men. The worldview is holistic and oriented in the embodied rather than the abstract. These cultures value community, birthing, nurturing, empathy, intuitive intelligence, earth, nature, connection and interdependence. The orientation of time is not linear, but is cyclical and aligned with the eternal cycles of birth, growth, death and renewal. The divine is understood to be embodied in every person and in nature, not somewhere else, abstract and disembodied. Sensuality and sexuality are honored as sacred. These feminine values belong to women and men; they are a valued part of society when the feminine is not suppressed. They are not womens tenets, they are societies.

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