SuttaCentral
Namo Buddhaya!
Gotami advocated for the mātugāmo to be given the going forth
“Sir, please let females gain the going forth from the lay life to homelessness in the teaching and training proclaimed by the Realized One.”
“sādhu, bhante, labheyya mātugāmo tathāgatappavedite dhammavinaye agārasmā anagāriyaṁ pabbajjan”ti.
I guess my argument was more about them being an ‘active’/forward woman (vs a passive one). This could be both positive and negative.
EDIT:
This would also tie in to her ‘undesirablity’ in the OP sutta SN37.1
This could be a situation where mātugāma is used in a positive sense of an assertive woman. A woman who looks after herself.
From a Vinaya point of view, purisa is often paired with itthi, and the meaning is clearly male/female. For instance, at bhikkhu pārājika 1, we find three kinds of itthi and three kinds of purisa: human, animals, and non-humans (usually referring to lower devas). The only reasonable rendering here is female/male. And so itthi goes quite naturally with purisa, whereas mātugāma is something slightly different. At least in this context!
If itthi is the general “female”, mātugāma must be more specific. The question is how specific. So far as I know there is no other word that properly covers “woman”, and so I think it is likely that mātugāma is a general term for this. It could be, of course, that mātugāma has a more specific meaning in specific contexts, as woman does in English, for instance in “that woman”. I sense a whole PhD thesis in this!