This interpretive essay examines McDermott’s hypothesis that the earliest known images of the human body from the European Upper Paleolithic (so-called Venus figurines) were self-representations by women. The authors ask why it took so long to consider the possibility that these figurines were made by women and suggest that the figurines may have served as obstetrical aids, with the figures’ varying abdominal sizes helping women to calculate the progress of their pregnancies.
Source: Toward Decolonizing Gender: Female Vision in the Upper Paleolithic on JSTOR