Women In The Aztec Empire

The Aztec’s claim to have originated from Aztlan, an island in a lake in northwestern Mexico. They were then led to central Mexico by Huitzilopochtli, the war god and the tangible representation of the sun (Coe and Koontz, 186). Huitzilopochtli became the Mexica’s most beloved and feared god. (religion which links to the war and human sacrifice that the Aztec’s highly valued and the political system in place-Aztec emperor).
In the Aztec community women were usually overpowered by men, they were also essential for the Aztec empire since they had the power to reproduce, and because women’s role in the Aztec Empire were different than men’s they had different upbringings.
Aztec women had the capacity to be strong and powerful, they were not completely
When Coatlicue, Huitzilopochtli’s mother was pregnant, Coyolxauhqui united her 400 brothers against her mother, and planed an attack (Read and Gonzalez, 155). However, as soon as Coyolxauhqui and her siblings began the attack, Huitzilopochtli was born in full warrior armor and dismembered Coyolxauhqui (Read and Gonzalez, 155). The legend of Coyolxauhqui demonstrates the possibility that female warriors were not uncommon in Aztec civilization. Coyolxauhqui was a woman who held power and a leadership position, which demonstrates that women did have the ability to show their strength. However, just because women were strong did not mean that they were encouraged to exhibit that sort of behavior, if anything they were discouraged by their male counterparts. As
The importance of reproduction is evident in all societies since it is the only way that a civilization will continue to exist. Reproduction was extremely vital for the Aztecs to the point that men in the Aztec civilization envied females, not because they wanted to physically resemble them, but because they could not accomplish reproduction. While the Aztec civilization was patriarchal, Paloma Martinez-Cruz claims that males suffered “vulva envy,” (32). “Vulva envy” basically meant that men envied women for having an uterus and being able to produce offspring and women’s menstruation (Martnez- Cruz, 32). This envy resulted from the fact that men do not hold the ability to give birth. Since men were not able to reproduce they gave back to the community by becoming warrior. Furthermore, childbirth itself was a mystery to the Aztec males and the details of it were usually only known to mothers and the midwives who assisted childbirth. The fact that this intelligence was restricted only to women only made men more envious. The important of children in the Aztec community cannot be simple overlooked. They were literally the future of the civilization. The more male children women had, meant an increased in the number of warriors they had, and if a woman had a daughter then it just meant that in a couple year that daughter would also be able to reproduce. In increase in