Yet, many other women complained such thinking was demeaning and kept them on a "mother-goddess" pedestal, with their virginity as the touchstone of family honour.

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Ganges is revered as a goddess, and it is often called maiya or mother.

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'She's the complete Goddess, who has infinite love combining that of wife and mother.

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He wrote of Niobe, the mother of 14 children who boasted about how much more fertile she was than the goddess Leto.

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