Great Mother goddesses were powerful because they had no husband.

Evidence

Neither was the Asiatic Great Mother assumed to have a husband: she had engendered the world and reigned over it alone; she could be lascivious by impulse, but her greatness as Mother was not diminished by imposed wifely servitudes. Likewise, Mary never experienced the stain connected with sexuality. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 368

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to matriarchal-goddess scholarship and to the contrast with Greek warrior goddesses like Athena/Minerva mentioned here. — connects to: A single mother achieved national black leadership without a husband’s support — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 732