for involvement in the public life of business or politics. Widespread belief that women were intellectually inferior to men led most societies to limit women’s education to learning domestic skills. Well-educated, upper-class men controlled most positions of employment and power in society. Traditionally, female family members existed only in terms of their relationships to men. As daughters, subject to the control and whim of fathers, women represented a means of economic or political gain through marital arrangements. As wives, they became their husbands’ property, and symbols of power and status. Violence against women served to coerce their acquiescence in this scheme and perpetuate subservience to male relatives. Legally permitted abuse of women continued to exist in many Western cultures until the late nineteenth century. Early Roman societies deemed a wife the property of her husband and therefore subject to his control. According to early Roman law, a man could beat, divorce, or murder his wife for offenses committed by her which belittled his honour or threatened his property rights. Roman society considered enforcement of such rights of control essentially a private matter, and thus failed to subject the husband to either public scrutiny or disapproval. Both the Old and New Testament attest to the belief in early teachings in the obedience of women. Indeed, Eve’s creation from the rib of Adam provided an excuse for early preaching regarding women’s submissive role within the family. According to the teachings, a woman’s virtues included obedience, chastity, and passivity. Failure to conform to those standards subjected to an unruly wife to death by mutilation or stoning. The misuse of the scripture to excuse the authority over women is unacceptable. Clearly, men and women are created equally in the image of God and are one in Christ. In his Apostolic Letter ‘On the Dignity and Vocation of W...
