One of my male friends once commented that women will stick together and help each other, even if they do not know each other. We laughed about the situations in which this would happen while I heartily agreed with him.

There seems to be a bond that women share that surpasses nationality, religious beliefs, ethnicity, social status or ideologies. The Spice Girls of the 1990’s talked about “girl power” and it is this power that allows women to raise themselves out of many life threatening situations over and over again. And while they are lifting themselves up, they would pull another woman up along the way.

Gale Berkowitz, a writer for the online magazine hwel, a review of health, wellness and extraordinary living, reports in the May 2007 issue that a landmark UCLA study suggests that friendships between women help to shape who women are and who they hope to be. She reports that such female bonding “soothes the tumultuous inner world of women by filling emotional gaps and helping each other to remember who they really are.”

Berkowitz reports that scientists now suspect that women who hang out with their female friends can actually counteract the kind of “stomach-quivering stress most women experience on a daily basis.” She further writes that the UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause them to make and maintain friendships with other women.

Until this study was published, scientists generally believed that when people experience stress, they trigger a hormonal cascade that revs the body to either stand and fight or flee as fast as possible," explains Laura Cousino Klein, Ph.D., now an Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health at Penn State University and one of the study's authors. "It's an ancient survival mechanism left over from the time we were chased across the planet by saber-toothed tigers."

Now the researchers suspect that women have a larger behavioral repertoire than just "fight or flight." "In fact," says Dr. Klein, "it seems that when the hormone oxytocin is released as part of the stress responses in a woman, it buffers the "fight or flight" response and encourages her to tend children and gather with other women instead.” ( www.desnoyers-schuler.com/hwel )

This bond that exists among women is want helps to keep many societies together. When the world seems to have gone mad, it is usually women who will rise up and speak out against the wrongs that have taken place. Women will usually gather themselves to defend or protect. Women will not want to strike out in violence, but rather, look for ways to solve the situation peacefully.

Women seem to grow from each other and the power they have when they work as a team is phenomenal. But what this scientific study has done is prove that the bond women share is almost innate and perhaps explains why many men cannot understand the connection they share.

A woman doesn’t need to know your name to give you a word of encouragement if you are in distress. The mothers who stand around the court houses in this country can feel and read the pain on each others’ faces and react to that pain. The women who have been diagnosed with terminal diseases need not know the details of each others’ medical history, but they know how to lean in with a supporting shoulder.

This girl power is not learned in the classrooms and perhaps not even in the home. The gravitational pull of one woman to another cannot be stopped, but scientists have now offered an explanation. But even before this scientific proof was offered, women new they were special and had the power to strengthen themselves and each other.

About the author: Joye Ritchie-Greene is an Educational Consultant, Writer and Martial Arts Instructor. She is the owner/operator of The Bahamas Martial Arts Academy; president of Time-Out Productions; and is also a columnist for the Freeport News. She has a B.A. in English and an M.S. in Human Resources, resides in Freeport, Grand Bahama with her husband and enjoys playing tennis. Joye can be reached at joye_hel_ena@hotmail.com