True Womanhood for Today

Dannah Gresh: Mary Kassian says your womanhood has cosmic significance.

Mary Kassian: Who we are as women matters. It isn’t just me doing my life. It is me testifying to the story of the gospel. And I need to understand what Scriptures says in order to do that in the right way.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, co-author of True Woman 101 and True Woman 201, for July 6, 2026. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Welcome back to another week of true womanhood conversations. That’s our theme here in the month of July. It’s got me reflecting on the movement that began back in 2008 at the first True Woman conference. This message of true womanhood/biblical womanhood, we don’t need it any less today. In fact, I think we need it more than ever.

I’m here today with my dear friend, Mary Kassian. And you know, Mary, I feel such an urgency surrounding this conversation. I mean, I’m reading a lot about women deconstructing their faith, leaving organized religion at higher rates than men. Now, this would mark a historical reversal in traditional gender roles in religious participation.

Are you seeing that? Are you concerned about that as well?

Mary: Well, I’m seeing that, and I’m actually seeing a lot of statistics shifting. It used to be that it was men initiating divorce, men having more affairs, and now that has shifted also where the majority of affairs, I think, are initiated by women.

Dannah: I think what we’re seeing is just different behavior being informed by something we’ve been feasting on mentally and emotionally for decades, and that is the topic of gender and sexuality. 

Really, since the fifties and sixties, we’ve been fixated on those things. And, if you talk to some of those young women who are deconstructing or leaving the faith, or some of those women who are leading in the divorce, they’re saying that the gender and sex issues are at the top of the list of either why they aren’t pursuing the religious activity or why they are pursuing their “rights.”

Mary: It all stems back, actually, to ideology. And you’re quite right. There’s been such a shift, and it stems back to how we’ve been taught to think and how our culture has taught young women to think, which is very different than the way that we used to train women to think.

Dannah: What is the ideology that is prevalent in our culture today?

Mary: Well, the ideology stems back to feminism, which really started back in the early 1900s, first-wave feminism. And then second-wave feminism is where it picked up a lot of impetus throughout the 1960s to 1980s. And then third-wave feminism, and I think we’re even entering into a fourth-wave feminist ideology right now.

So the biggest shift, I think, came in the 1960s with the second-wave feminism. This really identified women as a sex class, that women were oppressed by men as a group—men as a group oppressed women as a group. And in order to be free and in order to be equal and in order to be happy, women need to break free from the traditional ideas and start to define their own lives, define who they were as women, and to find truth.

Dannah: So, let me just play the devil’s advocate here. What you just said, I think the majority of people would say, “Well, wasn’t it a good thing that women can vote? Isn’t it a good thing that women can own property? Isn’t it a good thing that women can make as much money as men?”

Mary: Well, that stems back to first-wave feminist ideology that really pushed for that . . . and there were a lot of good things.

Now, I need to point out that whenever there is something deceptive, there’s a lot of truth in it. There’s a lot of good in it. Otherwise, people wouldn’t fall for the lies. So, there is a lot of validity. There are valid concerns. Feminism taps into that. 

But then it just moves the compass off, like, 5 percent, 10 percent. Like Eve in the garden when Satan came to her. He didn’t tempt her with a total lie. It was a half-truth. There was an element of truth in it, otherwise she wouldn’t have fallen for it.

I think that’s the case with feminism as well. I think where first-wave feminism went wrong was having the idea that women are a group that are independent of men. Now, the Bible teaches male and female as interdependent. So, there’s an interdependency, but first-wave feminism said, “No. We want to be treated completely separately, and our concerns are separate from men’s concerns.”

And then second-wave feminism picked up on that and started saying, “You know what? We need to start defining truth based on who we believe we are and what we believe is right for women.”

Dannah: So what I hear you saying is: it’s not a bad thing that there were women suffragists who said, “I think we have the intellect to vote and help select our leaders.” You’re saying that was good. But that some of that, maybe 5 or 10 percent of the motivation in why they were pursuing that was to break off a connectedness to men rather than come alongside them.

Mary: Absolutely. That’s exactly what I’m saying.

And you know what’s really interesting is that there was a true woman movement back in the 1800s. When this whole suffragist movement started, there was also a true woman movement that started raising the alarm and saying, “There are some ideas here that are good and right; however, the impetus behind it, we’re really going to start ripping men and women apart. We’re going to start dismantling the family unit. We’re really going to start attacking things that God holds very dear.” And their fears have really come to fruition as feminism has gone through its various waves.

We’ve seen more and more deconstruction of the family, more deconstruction of sexual norms, biblical sexual norms, sexual standards. We’ve seen just an increase in women claiming the right to define truth, define reality, and to say the Bible didn’t get it right as women we have the right to define ourselves. We’ve seen that just huge shifts in culture that have impacted all of us. It’s the water we swim in.

I was born in 1960, so I kind of lived through second-wave feminism. And it’s interesting, just over the course of my lifetime, the way that feminist ideology came in, it really shifted society to such an extent that now it’s the default setting. It never used to be the default setting, but now it's the default setting.

Young women have a very hard time thinking that things could be different or that culture was different or that the Bible standards really are workable, that the way the Bible approaches things is actually a workable and a good way to structure your life and to structure relationships and marriage.

Dannah: As you said a moment ago, there were valid disconnects. There were valid concerns. Almost everything rises up out of a valid concern, but then the motivation or the methodology of how we fix that problem goes awry. 

Feminism promised to deliver some fulfillment to women. I’m wondering, did it do that? Did it solve the problems that women . . .

Mary: Statistically, if we look at happiness of women, it has consistently dropped. So, when Betty Friedan in 1963, in her book Feminine Mystique, her big thing was women are unhappy. They’re supposed to be happy being housewives and mothers. They’re supposed to be happy with the white picked fence. They’re supposed to be happy with the traditional, kind of Leave It to Beaver lifestyle. But they are unhappy, and what is it that is causing women to be unhappy?

Her answer to that was patriarchy—which is pater, which is father and archi which is to rule. So it’s the rule of the father. It’s the position of men in society that have caused the unhappiness of women. So, that was the whole impetus.

This whole movement of second-wave feminism was women are unhappy. We need to increase the happiness of women. When women throw off the shackles of traditionalism, they will be happier.

And what has born out over the last forty years is that women’s happiness has decreased even more from the time when Betty Friedan set about to solve the problem of women’s happiness.

Dannah: Yes. It’s interesting how you can just trace it back to the 1960s. It’s unbelievable, really.

I’ve been seeing so many social media reels and TikTok videos of women in their, I don’t know, their forties, late thirties, saying, “I’ve followed the career path. I did what feminism told me to do. And now it’s too late. I’ll never be a mom, and I’m angry about it.”

And so, there’s this swelling up of women who are saying out loud, “It’s not worth it.”

Mary: There is a swelling of women saying, “It did not work.” And some of them are trying to go back to a traditional model. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the “trad wife phenomenon.” Have you heard about it?

Dannah: Yes.

Mary: It’s kind of, “I’m going to be a traditional wife. I’m going to go back to the 1950s, put on my apron, my pearls, bake bread, and homestead. I’m going to start canning, and I’m going to be a trad wife.” It seems like there’s a lot of friction between this trad wife phenomenon and the career woman phenomenon. On social media you see the conflict all the time.

But here’s the problem with that: they’re trying to live this model of womanhood that is really just sort of external behavior. There is no change of heart. There is no Holy Spirit guiding them. It’s almost like a costume that they put on.

I know that there are some prominent now trad wives that have run into issues because they said, “Oh, well, I’m just obeying my husband in everything,” and they end up being very depressed, downtrodden, and some of them abused.

So they’re trying to put this model on, this model of behavior, without the spiritual understanding or the spiritual heart, or even grasping what it is that God has to say about womanhood.

Dannah: What does God have to say about womanhood? You mentioned there was a true woman movement way back when, and we were a part of the beginning of a true woman movement that started in 2008. Women were revived. Women were, really, returning to some traditional roles, but they were doing it with satisfaction and happiness and vibrancy and joy. They were leaving their careers and going home to be moms.

Now, we’re not saying that a woman can’t have a career. We’re not saying that. But we’re just saying that there is a joy in having a submission to the plan that God has for our lives—whether you’re becoming a trad wife, or whether you’re a woman who has a career outside of the home, you can find joy when you do it through the route of being a biblical woman or a true woman. What is that?

Mary: Well, that, in a word, is saying yes to what God says for us. So, understanding that womanhood is much bigger than us. It’s much bigger than who we are. My womanhood has cosmic significance. So when we look at Scripture, we see that Scripture opens with a man and a woman and a marriage. That’s when history began.

 

And then you go and turn to Revelation, and you see that history is going to end with a man and a woman and a marriage. The man being Jesus Christ, the woman being the Church (corporate), and the marriage being the wedding supper of the Lamb in Revelation.

So, the very reason that God created us male and female was to tell the story of Jesus and to tell the story to point forward to the gospel, and to point forward to the consummation of the relationship between Christ and the Church, and to point forward to what will be eternally true.

So who we are as women matters. It isn’t just me doing my life. It is me testifying to the story of the gospel. I need to understand what Scripture says in order to do that in the right way. It’s not a prescription. It’s not a stereotype. It’s not a cookie cutter, “Oh, I need to do A-B-C.”

I need to understand that who I am testifies to the story of the gospel, and so the decisions I make, my priorities, how I conduct myself in marriage, how I mother my children . . . If I’m a single woman, how I conduct myself as a single woman. All of that has to come under the authority of the Word of God and points to the story of the gospel.

If we lose that anchor, we just start having all these endless debates of, “Well, womanhood should look like this. No, it should look like this.” We have mommy wars and career woman wars. Should I stay at home or should I go to work wars. All of that misses the point. It misses the point of just taking a look at Scripture, understanding who we are, understanding our purpose, and understanding who we are ties into the story of the gospel.

Dannah: Okay. So I have a little quirk, and I’m just going to be honest with you. I feel like the word gospel can be very . . . It’s a beautiful word. It’s a powerful word. It’s an important word. It can also be a very unemotional word. I feel like I want to insert the word love here, because I feel like what family lets us see is the way that God helps us to understand His love for us in two ways.

One of them is Father love, which is why father leadership is such an important thing in the picture of the gospel. When a father loves you and protects you and nurtures you and covers you, you are safe. That is a good thing.

And then the other way that family lets us see it is through this, just this passionate love of a husband and wife. That is the kind of love that we experience with Christ as the Bride of Christ.

And so, so many women might feel like a duty to say, “You need to be a picture of the gospel.” Which is not what you were saying, but we can hear it that way. (I am learning that many women, and men, hear things through the lens of their experience, and so it doesn’t land the right way.)

So I want to be really clear here that the reason we value this picture of the gospel is because of the love it enables us to experience—not just here on this earth in a really healthy family environment, but because it allows us to experience what we were ultimately created to experience, the love relationship with the God of the universe.

Mary: That’s so well said, Dannah. When I say gospel, another way to say it is love story. It’s the love story of God the Father sending His Son, creating for His Son a Bride through sacrifice and Jesus Christ loving us so much.

So, I think you’re quite right about that because when we talk about the love story of the gospel, that becomes a compelling thing because, really, it’s what women want deep down. They want to belong. They want to experience the kind of profound unity that is dangled out for them. They want the dream wedding. They want the fairytale ending. They want the father that loves them and cherishes them and protects them. They want to be part of that story.

I think the reason that God gave us all of these earthly images was because we wouldn’t understand what a relationship with Jesus was all about apart from these images. We wouldn’t understand what a father’s love is apart from having earthly dads and apart from knowing that some of them are bad and some of them are really, really good. And it’s the really, really good ones that lead us, imperfectly even, to a heavenly Father who loves us so perfectly and is better than any earthly father. There’s a yearning in women’s hearts for that. There’s a yearning to step into that love story, to step into that family love story.

Dannah: I had to just defend this recently because I re-released my book, And the Bride Wore White. People said to me, “Are you sure you should keep that title? Do teenage girls today really still want to get married? I don’t think they do.” And the reality is they are not dating as much. They are not marrying as much. There’s a big crisis as far as all of that goes.

I went into some secular research, and the fact is that 95 percent of teenagers long to be married one day. They are also afraid to say that. Why? Because of the feminist Kool-Aid that we’ve all been drinking.

And so what we’re saying today is we want to release that inner desire because it’s a good desire. It is a God desire. Now, God may not choose for marriage to be a part of your picture one day because it is just a picture of His love. You may be in a love relationship directly with Jesus. He wants you to nurture that love. But if you are a picture of that love by marrying a man one day, that is a good thing. It is a good thing to want that in your heart and in your life.

Mary, I want to ask you this, and we might not have enough time to unpack this, but I feel like some women would say, “I’m afraid true womanhood means I have to lose myself.”

Mary: I think that women are afraid of that because they think that when you say yes to what God says, you will lose all of your agency, you will lose your personality, that you will become just another stereotype, and you will lose everything about you that is colorful and beautiful. And I would say that the exact opposite is true.

C.S. Lewis once said that when you come to Jesus, you become more you than you ever were before, that what the Lord does in our hearts is, He redeems our identity. He helps us find out who we are. And He actually knows us better than we know ourselves. And when we enter into a relationship with Him and pursue that relationship and go deeper and begin to walk with the Lord and keep in step with the Spirit, I think we discover more and more about who He created us to be because God knows us better than we know ourselves.

I think often the way that we approach life is we accept the scripts that we hear in society. We accept the scripts that we have been told by others—perhaps by our parents, perhaps by our friends, perhaps by professors at university—and we internalize those scripts. A lot of them are not based on truth. A lot of them don’t fit, but we try and squeeze ourselves into that mold. We try and tell ourselves, “Well, this is who I am. This is who I am,” because we’re so desperate to define who we are.

And the wonderful thing about the Word of God is the Lord says, “No. Listen, I created you. I knit you together in your mother’s womb. I know everything about you. I love your personality. I love the way that I formed and created you. Now, come to Me, and I will show you who I am, and in that journey, you will discover who you are.”

Dannah: We have had a front-row seat to see that play out life after life, country after country. In 2008 something wonderful happened. A conference called True Woman gathered women who were hungry for something deeper than cultural slogans about womanhood, shallow empowerment.

And what began as a single event, a small but mighty group of women have spread around the globe. Women signed a Manifesto which gave them a grid by which to conform their lives to the Word of God and what He says, and conform our lives, more importantly, to the Person of God.

They started gathering in churches and in their living rooms.

They studied Scripture.
Marriages were restored.
Younger women started loving being moms. It wasn’t a drudgery anymore. They started to enjoy it.
Older women started to disciple younger women.

And perhaps one of the most beautiful parts of this story is what God has done in Latin America where it’s just like this on-fire revival, a hunger for God’s Word that continues to spread in Spanish-speaking women.

It all started in 2008 at one conference, and it’s still growing. It’s moving across the globe, and we want you to be a part of it.

Mary: Dannah, I’m really, really excited about the True Woman conference coming up because it will mark twenty years—not twenty-year anniversary, but twenty years since 2008. We have seen God work in an amazing way, but we need this message now more than ever.

Dannah: We do.

Mary: I think that women now, even more than back in 2008, are crying out for meaning, to know who they are, and to understand the truth that will set them free.

Dannah: Ah, I cannot wait! A True Woman 2027 conference is coming in Indianapolis, September 30 through October 2, 2027. Mark your calendar. We’ll be talking about God’s design for our womanhood as we dive deeper into the issues we talked about today and explore so much more together.

I really do believe we need this message now more than ever—single or married, young or old, in the workplace or in the home. The True Woman Movement is for you. We hope to see women transformed by God’s Word and then sent forth to display the beauty of Christ and the wonder of His grace. Thousands of women who will embrace His calling saying, “Yes, Lord. Use me. Use me for the sake of Your kingdom and for Your glory.”

Early registration is open, so go get that discount before it’s too late. I really hope to see you there.

A few more exciting reminders: the Wonder App for teens has been flourishing, and thousands of girls have joined us there to read through the Bible. Now, these girls represent the next generation of true women, and I’m so encouraged—encouraged to see how hungry they are for God’s Word.

If you’ve got a teen girl in your life, invite her to join us. You can get more info and download the app at ReviveOurHearts.com/wonder.

We’ve also just released a brand-new resource from Mary this month, her book, What Is a Woman?: The Question Our World Is Afraid to Answer. In this resource, Mary helps us discern truth from falsehood. Turns out God has answered this question with clarity and compassion in His Word, and I’m excited for us to explore this answer together through this book and Mary’s teaching that goes along with it. We’ll be hearing some of that later this week right here on Revive Our Hearts.

When you donate any amount to support us in July, we’ll send you What Is a Woman? as our thanks. To give and request this beautiful resource, visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959.

What does it mean to be a woman of the Word? Tomorrow we’re diving back into the True Woman Manifesto with Nancy to find out. I’m excited to continue learning and growing together. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.