The collective dimension of the body of pain has different ramifications. Tribes, nations, and races have their own collective bodies, some heavier than others, and most members of the tribe, nation, or race participate in them to a greater or lesser extent.
Almost all women participate in the female body of collective pain, which tends to be activated especially before menstruation. At that time, many women feel overwhelmed by negative emotions.
The suppression of the feminine principle, especially during the last 2,000 years, has left room for the ego to assert its supremacy in the collective psyche of humanity. Although it is obvious that women also have an ego, it finds more fertile ground to take root in the masculine rather than the feminine form. This is because women are less identified with the mind than men. They remain in greater contact with the inner body and the intelligence of the organism where the faculties of intuition originate. The feminine form is less rigidly encapsulated than the masculine, more open and sensitive to other forms of life, and more attuned to the natural world.
If the balance between masculine and feminine energy on our planet had not been destroyed, the growth of the ego would have been greatly hampered. We would not have declared war on nature and we would not be so completely alienated from our Being.
Nobody knows the exact figures because there are no records from the time, but it seems that during a period of 300 years, the Court of the Holy Inquisition tortured and murdered between 3 and 5 million women. That institution was founded by the Catholic Church to suppress heresy. There is no doubt that, along with the Holocaust, that period stands before us as one of the darkest chapters in human history. It was enough for a woman to show love for animals, walk alone in the fields or forests, or gather medicinal herbs, to be branded a witch and then tortured and burned at the stake. Sacred femininity was declared manic and an entire dimension practically disappeared from human experience. Other cultures and religions such as Judaism, Islam and even Buddhism have also suppressed the feminine dimension, although in a less violent way. The situation of women was reduced to being the vehicle to bring children into the world and to being the property of men. The men who denied our feminine aspect, even inside, went on to run the world, a totally unbalanced world. The rest is history or rather a history of cases of madness.
Who was to blame for this fear of the feminine, which can only be described as acute collective paranoia? We could say that the culprits were men, naturally. But then, why in so many pre-Christian civilizations such as the Sumerian, the Egyptian and the Celtic women were respected and the feminine principle was not feared but revered? What was it that made men feel threatened by women? The ego that evolved within him. He knew that only through the masculine form could he fully control our planet and that, to do so, he had to render the feminine form useless.
In time, the ego took hold of most women as well, although it could never take hold as deeply in them as in men.
We now live in a situation in which the suppression of our feminine aspect has been internalized, even in the majority of women. Many of them, since the sacredness of the feminine is suppressed, feel it in the form of emotional pain. In effect, it has become part of her painbody, along with the suffering inflicted on women for thousands of years through childbirth, rape, slavery, torture, and violent death.
But things are changing fast. Many people are beginning to become aware and the ego is beginning to lose its hold on the human mind. Since the ego never took deep root in women, it is losing its hold on them faster than it is on men.

(A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle)