Women in the Writings of the Fathers: Language, Belief, and Reality

Abstract

The Church Fathers inherited from their social and intellectual environment a long tradition of debate about the physical, moral, and intellectual capacities of women. It would be an oversimplification to say that the uniform teaching of ancient philosophers and rhetoricians was that women were in every respect naturally inferior to men. Plato, for one, defended the view that moral goodness is the same for women as for men; the fact that they perform different tasks—the duties of a citizen in the case of a (free) man, and of a good wife, directing her household in obedience to her husband, in the case of a woman—does not mean that the same moral qualities of justice and temperance are not required of both. In his Republic, a radical programme for the restructuring of traditional society, Plato advocates equal access to education for women and an equality of opportunity for the intellectually able, regardless of sex, to rise to leading roles in the administration of the State. He continues to believe that most women will be inferior to most men at important tasks; but ‘it was something to have it said that sex is not relevant to natural ability and moral capacity’, and it is possible to detect the influence of subsequent philosophers who agreed with Plato in forming ‘an increasing belief in the competence and trustworthiness of women’ in financial and political affairs, even if the belief was to have little practical effect in changing socially-accepted roles.