- English translation
Women will never raise a calf that can plow.
- Literal wording
Never in the lifetime of women do they raise a calf that plows.
- Meaning and lesson
Through a farming image, the saying claims that a calf reared by a woman never becomes a working plow animal, supposedly because her care leaves it untrained and unfit for hard labor in the field.
Applied to people, it records an old sexist belief, not a valid judgment, that anyone raised and disciplined mainly by women will not succeed, blaming a person's failings on a female upbringing.
- When it is used
Applied to someone deemed a failure, blaming women who raised them. Aimed at a real person, it insults both that person and those women, as does the related taunt calling someone 'a woman's upbringing.' Best kept to discussions of folk sayings and the attitudes behind them.
- Register
- Colloquial Arabic; disparaging
Cite or copy proverb
How this record reached us: Editorially sourced.
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