Women, of course, often have not enjoyed anything close to equality, reports Elizabeth Wayland Barber in her book Women’s Work—The First 20,000 Years.
Socrates, Barber writes, once asked an Athenian gentleman named Isomachos if he had trained his 14-year-old bride.
Yes, the gentleman replied, because the girl was of “good breeding,” and she had spent her first fourteen years seeing, hearing and saying “as little as possible.”
Isomachos taught his wife that the first purpose of marriage is to have offspring. It also is the woman’s job “to keep the shelter in good order, since she is the weaker and more timid and needs to nurse the infants.”