13 “[...] I try to distinguish between two meanings of motherhood, one superimposed on the other: the potential relationship of any woman to her powers of reproduction and to children; and the institution, whichaims at ensuring that potential — and all women — shall remain under male control... [The institution] has alienated women from our bodies by incarcerating us in them. At certain points in history, and in certain cultures, the idea of women-as-mother has worked to endow all women with respect, even with awe, and to give women some say in the life of a people or a clan. But for most of what we know as the ‘mainstream’ of recorded history, motherhood as institution has ghettoized and degraded female potentialities.”