WONDER Woman has arrived in the form of a 30-year-old Israeli supermodel, bringing with her an odd notion of female empowerment which has been embraced (perhaps surprisingly) as tightly as the blue corset she wears.

But do we really need an American icon with a shiny lasso to represent all that is powerful about womankind? Do we really need a lady in tiara and tights to teach us how stoic and at times superhuman, women can be? After all, the Scottish mother has been revealing superpowers since history began.

She has x-ray vision, evidenced in the ability to see inside the short- trouser pocket of a five-year-old boy, in which he has secreted a half-eaten Mars Bar, having broken the pre-dinner sweets curfew. She can see also see inside schoolbags and the mind of her husband.

History continually reminds us of the famous Scottish mothers who battled for social redress, in Clydebank factories, in leading rent strikes in Govan and fighting against Fascism. But the superness of the ordinary Scottish mum has been missed out, a lady with telescopic vision, who can see her child bleeding at the knee from 50 yards, who can spot nits in the seven year-old female’s dark curly head and crush them under her thumbnail as fast as they have been detected. This woman can see danger ahead in the form of a fast car, or an overly-curious stranger.

The Scottish mother is born with super strength. In the early Sixties she has been known to push a pram up a 1:5 hill containing two tiny tots while dragging a weary five year-old and his three-wheeler bike, tied to the pram with a piece of rope. She could lift coal buckets up three flights of stairs with a single bound.

Wonder Woman isn’t invulnerable, and neither is Wonder Wummin. But like the comic book heroine she acts as though she is, exemplified by the heroine who once halted a double decker bus in Johnstone High Street on Friday at tea-time, thus preventing it from moving forward until the driver handed over his wage packet. (Denying evil the chance to drink the week’s housekeeping in a single night.)

While the Amazonian’s rope-twirling skills are legendary could she tie up a line and peg a full family wash in under five minutes – and take it down at the first splash of rain in the time it takes to say “Great Girdle of Aphrodite”?

On the subject of clothes, the Scottish mother may not leave the house every day wearing a tiara and thigh-length boots, (although she may get dolled up a little at the weekend) but metaphorically the coat and scarf and small heel are all the uniforms needed to fight injustice – against the factor too slow to fix the close door, or the coalman, whose second bag was all too full of dross.

And she didn’t need Wonder Woman’s bullet-deflecting arm bands, not when she had her protective cardie which, for some magical reason kept her warm in winter and cool in summer. (It’s soft, lambswool was also used to dab tearful eyes, her own at times during a Bette Davis movie, and certainly those of her skint-kneed progeny.)

Wonder Woman represents a paradox; she’s powerful and true, but for some feminists she’s too much of a male fantasy with perfect liquid eyeliner and a shield. With the Scottish mother there is no confusion. She believes in women, she will fight for women, and she will lay down her body to protect her kids. And truly, logic is her weapon of choice; “Do that again and you’ll wake up deid.”

Wonder Woman was created by a Harvard History professor William Marston, who enjoyed group sex and bondage. Wonder Wummin was created by the demands of Scottish life, of struggle, of necessity. That has been her bondage. But she’s been able to break free. A real superhero.