And though we’re not hating on men (Erin works with a lot of great men at Boulevard), I’m really wondering why they get to do all the good stuff. An often cited 2014 report from Auburn University showed that just 29% of brewery workers were female, and far less were in leadership or CEO positions.

But, women have been the primary brewers (and goddesses) of beer until just the past hundred or so years. While men were hunting, women gathered ingredients for the brews and handled fermentation. And I don’t mean sometimes. Check out these historical highlights:

1. History’s oldest written beer recipe is rooted in ancient Sumeria, where women brewed low alcohol beer for religious ceremonies and daily consumption. These women received a great deal of respect because they “served as priestesses of the revered beer goddesss, Ninkasi.” Ninkasi was worshipped as head brewer of the gods, and she bestowed beer upon humanity to “preserve peace and promote well-being.” Check out the hymn-recipe.

2. Some historians credit Babylonian women as participating in the world’s earliest commerce by selling beer and keeping written records of their sales (at around the beginning of the common era).

3. The Egyptians (learning to brew beer from their Sumerian and Babylonian neighbors) worshipped Tenenit, the goddess of childbirth and beer. Yet another goddess, Hathor/Sekhmet, was credited with saving humanity from destruction(!) after a night of heavy drinking. Even the hieroglyphics show women brewing and drinking.

4. In Europe, Baltic & Slavic mythology credits the goddess Raugutiene with providing divine protection over beer. Finnish legends tell of Kalevator, a woman who brought beer to earth by “mixing honey and bear saliva.”