The world in the past has been ruled by force, and man has dominated over
woman by reason of his more forceful and aggressive qualities both of body and
mind. But the balance is already shifting; force is losing its dominance, and
mental alertness, intuition, and the spiritual qualities of love and service,
in which woman is strong, are gaining ascendancy. Hence the new age will be an
age less masculine and more permeated with the feminine ideals, or, to speak
more exactly, will be an age in which the masculine and feminine elements of
civilization will be more evenly balanced.
(J. E. Esslemont, “Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era”, 5th rev. ed.
(Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1987), p. 149) [25]