Feminine vs. Masculine Spirituality: Why Self-Suppression Was Never the Path for Women

For much of history, spirituality has been defined through a masculine lens.

Not because men are more spiritual—but because the people with power were the ones writing the rules.

Masculine spirituality has been shaped around hierarchy, obedience, endurance, and self-denial. It rewards restraint. It prizes control. It equates virtue with sacrifice and holiness with disappearance.

And for men—who have historically been encouraged to take up space, lead, speak, and dominate—self-suppression can actually function as a counterbalance. It can soften the ego. It can redirect power outward. It can become a meaningful spiritual practice.

But when women are handed the same spiritual model, something breaks.

Because women were never over-encouraged to take up space in the first place.

The Spirituality We Were Given Was Built for Control

Many women raised in high-demand religious systems are taught that holiness looks like:

• Obedience

• Submission

• Service without self-reference

• Silence framed as humility

• Endurance framed as righteousness

In these systems, spirituality isn’t about inner expansion—it’s about maintaining the structure.

Get married.
Have children.
Serve endlessly.
Pay tithing.
Magnify your calling.
Diminish your doubts.
Defer your authority.

These practices are often framed as sacred, but they are deeply functional. They produce labor. They reinforce hierarchy. They preserve power.

And crucially, they disconnect women from themselves.

Why Masculine Spirituality Doesn’t Work for Women

Masculine spirituality often asks the practitioner to restrain the self.

Feminine conditioning has already done that work.

From a young age, women are trained to:

• Be accommodating

• Prioritize others’ needs

• Monitor their tone, body, and desires

• Seek approval before speaking

• Doubt their own instincts

So when women are told that spiritual maturity requires more self-erasure, it doesn’t lead to enlightenment—it leads to exhaustion, depression, resentment, and a profound loss of vitality.

Many women don’t leave religion because they lack faith.

They leave because their bodies can no longer tolerate being erased.

Feminine Spirituality Is Expansive, Not Restrictive

Feminine spirituality is not about domination or superiority.

It is about integration.

It asks different questions:

• What happens when I listen to myself?

• What expands my aliveness?

• What feels true in my body—not just acceptable to the system?

• What wants to be expressed through me?

For women, spiritual growth often looks like:

• Taking up space instead of shrinking

• Developing self-trust instead of outsourcing authority

• Naming anger instead of spiritualizing it away

• Creating instead of only serving

• Claiming desire instead of denying it

This is why creative practices—art, writing, movement, voice—are so powerful for women in reclamation. Creativity bypasses obedience. It restores agency.

As Clarissa Pinkola Estés writes, women’s instincts are not broken—they’ve been overruled.

Feminine spirituality is the process of remembering how to listen again.

Self-Expansion Is a Spiritual Act

Many women carry shame around growth.

They were taught that wanting more—more clarity, more autonomy, more pleasure, more voice—was selfish or prideful.

But expansion is not ego.

Expansion is alignment.

For women, self-development is often the most spiritual thing we can do because it directly counters the conditioning that taught us to disappear.

As Brené Brown reminds us, authenticity requires courage. And courage, for women, often looks like choosing self-expression over approval.

Not rebellion for rebellion’s sake—but truth for truth’s sake.

What Reclaimed Feminine Spirituality Looks Like

Reclaiming feminine spirituality doesn’t mean rejecting structure entirely. It means refusing to place structure above lived experience.

It looks like:

• Inner authority instead of assigned authority

• Intuition alongside intellect

• Discernment instead of blind obedience

• Creation alongside service

• Wholeness instead of purity

It is not louder—it is deeper.

And it doesn’t ask permission.

A Gentle Invitation

If you’ve ever felt like spirituality cost you your vitality…
If devotion required you to disappear…
If obedience muted your voice…

You’re not broken.

You were practicing a spirituality that was never designed with your full humanity in mind.

Feminine spirituality does not ask you to be less.

It asks you to become more.