by Laurie Winn Carlson

A cultural link between women and cattle seems unlikely in this age of turbo-powered technology. Yet, cows are all around us as decorative symbols, from the large fiberglass art-cow statues that decorated the streets of Chicago and New York recently, to their widespread presence in gift shops and department stores. Their whimsical countenances appear on a myriad of kitchen towels, coffee mugs, and cookie jars. This surge of interest in all things bovine by giftware manufacturers, who market a plethora of calendars, aprons, refrigerator magnets, and so on, all depicting clever or cute cows, is directed at women.

At first encounter, we may think the bovine décor theme silly and contrived, yet it harks back about 3,500 years, to the beginnings of cattle domestication. Bovine-related home décor has been around since ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Etruscans featured horned cattle on their walls, dishes, and jewelry. By tacking up cow calendars or filling cute, cow-shaped cookie jars, women unknowingly make connections to their ancestral past.

Today's ubiquitous black-and-white cattle images represent Holsteins, a dairy breed, and the animals are all cows: females. No Texas longhorns or chunky black Angus—animals raised for their meat. Women are attracted to dairy animals that signify the female, the domestic, the mother of all. The roots of such attraction are not new; they came about long before Walmart's kitchen design crew realized that Holsteins appeal to female shoppers. Ages ago, women linked themselves inextricably and symbolically with cows.

In ancient Egypt, the goddess Hathor, the great mother, was depicted as a cow whose body was the heavens and whose udder spewed out the Milky Way. Every day she gave birth to the sun, the Golden Calf. Other Mediterranean cultures were equally entranced with the power of the cow. The name "Italy," for example, means "calf-land." Milk—latte in Latin—was revered and respected for its power to nurture. Goddesses were adorned with headdresses representing cow's horns. Yes, indeed, today's diamond-studded tiara links back to priestesses who donned head pieces stylized with horns, symbolic of the much-revered cow.

Myths from the Near East, Japan, and India tell of a world created by the curdling action of milk, and of a universe that was "curdled" into being. Some told of human bodies being curdled from the goddess's milk. Renenet, a lady with inexhaustible breasts in Egyptian lore, held out her breasts to nurture the world, her head adorned with a cow's head or horns. Rennet, the enzyme found in bovine stomachs that causes milk to curdle, was sacred.¹ It’s still essential in cooking today.

The Romans enjoyed a pantheon of gods and goddesses, including Cornucopia. The cornucopia, or horn of plenty, symbolized a cow's horn spilling out the fruits of the earth. The cow, wet nurse to humanity, has a long history. But cows are invoked as symbols of milk and the feminine; meat is another matter all together. It makes sense that women connect with dairy cattle, whose milk has saved many a human infant. Women have a connection to beef cattle, too, but meat is a more political food. For hunters, obtaining meat and distributing it reflected power. Meat was a masculine possession—in hunting societies. For cattle keepers, things were different.

The rise of pastoral animal-herding societies changed the gendered roles that suited hunting societies. The role of meat—and dairy—in cattle-based cultures that existed during the long period between the prehistoric and the present developed a far different society. Females in herding societies had more equality and more power. The entire social system was built on nurturing skills and attitudes.

Cattle keepers nurtured their stock and emphasized breeding and rearing of the young animals, while cooperating as a clan to share the tasks. A lone hunter could survive, but a lone person trying to maneuver and control cattle—well that's a different story. Cattle require a clan to move them from place to place, as well as to retrieve them when they stray.

Cattle keepers were focused on the future, as hunters were not. A herd meant long-term survival and a future for one's children. Women easily took up livestock tending, because the animals could be kept near the house—some cultures kept them right in the house—and fed or watered with the help of children and the elderly.

Cows were valued, because they were female and could provide additional stock by bearing a calf every year. Milking cows provided extensive dietary protein; and milking was an essentially feminine task, until mechanization put it in male hands. Women processed the dairy products that made survival possible: cheese, butter, yogurt, whey. As clans began to base their politics and survival on the nurturing of cattle, women gained respect, ate better, and had clout.

The Celtic Irish people were such a cattle culture. The Celts were known for their iron-work, especially weaponry. More importantly, they also made iron tools: axes, plowshares, and scythes—tools that made growing and harvesting fodder for cattle much easier. They practiced intensive farming and cattle raising and dominated most of Europe for over 400 years, before Rome spread its empire outward, replacing Celtic practices with Roman ways. Culturally, Celtic art and design are the underpinnings of European traditions, but they were pushed to the perimeters of the British isles, mainly Wales, Cornwall, Scotland, and Ireland. They were a fierce, independent, cattle-raising people, who controlled their cattle with whips and dogs and strategically placed salt licks.

Celtic religion emphasized May Day—Beltaine—the day marking the divide between winter and summer. To purify the cattle, the herd was run through sacred bonfires to sanctify them for the coming summer grazing season. Celtic feasts, held in the tribal leader's home, included boiled pork, beef, game, and fish, along with honey, butter, cheese, curds and milk, wine, mead, and beer.² Celts were the first to use soap, made from beef fat and wood ashes. Celtic currency was in two forms: cattle and slaves. One female slave equaled the value of six heifers or three milk cows. Females, not male slaves or male cattle, were valued most highly.³

The Irish-Celtic goddess Brigit was worshipped all over Ireland. She was a healer and watched over women in childbirth and nursing ewes and cattle. She was a patron of crafts and poetry. When Christianity arrived on Ireland, Brigit underwent a change to St. Brigit, the most important female saint in Ireland. She was said to own cows that gave a lake of milk, which could provide a never-ending supply of food for the poor.⁴

Cattle were currency: children of freemen—who typically held seven cows and a bull, seven pigs and a sow, seven sheep and a horse, and grazing land to feed seven cows for a year—went to live with a foster family, a cultural tradition that lasted through the Middle Ages in Britain. The foster family was paid for keeping and training the child. Boys cost six heifers or one and a half milk cows, while girls' fees were set at eight heifers or two milk cows. Girls cost more to foster out, because boys were thought to be less trouble to raise.⁵

Cattle could be kept easily by women: heifers were kept for breeding, while young bulls were butchered before they grew too big to handle. The environment made it easy for women to build stone fences, tedious work which took stamina, but not great physical strength. Grass hay could be cut with hand scythes, then bundled and stored for winter. Butter and cheese, made by hand at home, were kept cool in pits dug in the ground. The entire process could be handled by females, with animals sent out to graze under the watchful eye of children. Women tended the cattle while the men were absent on long voyages or at war. Cattle-keeping lends itself to a matriarchy, evident in Africa, another seat of ancestral cattle keeping, as well.

1. Barbara G. Walker, The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. (San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishers, 1983), 181.
2. Duncan Norton-Taylor, The Celts. The Emergence of Man Series. (New York: Time-Life Books, 1974), 85.
3. Norton-Taylor, 48.
4. Celtic Myth. Heroes of the Dawn Series. (London: Duncan Baird Publishers, 1996), 37.
5. Norton-Taylor, 73.

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Farmer’s wife with cow, southeast Missouri, May 1938.

Sharecropper's wife leading cow to pasture, New Madrid County, Missouri, May 1938.

Historical photos by Russell Lee/Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Photographic Collection (Library of Congress).