These are the eras in time I foind most fascinating below.
Ancient Hinduism, 1500BC and after: Women have the right to control Stidham, or property
before marriage, which includes gifts from parents, friends and strangers as well as earnings
from her own work. Divorce is not allowed, and inheritance laws favor male family members.
Ancient Rome: The pendulum swings back as freeborn Roman women are allowed to divorce,
own property and inherit. Divorce is easy to get – presaging the Christian opposition to splitting
up marriages – but the husband has the legal right to keep the children.
Byzantine Empire, AD565: The Justinian laws – named for the emperor, known as “the last
Roman”, who created a template for modern western civil law – allow women to be married
without a dowry. Some working women, including prostitutes and tavern-workers, do not have
the right to marry Roman citizens and can only be kept by Roman men as concubines. If a
woman cheats on her husband, he can divorce her and “keep the pre-nuptial gift, the dowry and
one third of any other property she possessed”. Justinian’s wife, the Empress Theodora, a former
actress and wool-spinner, left her jobs when the emperor courted her. She is widely credited with
influencing him to expand property and divorce rights for women.
US, 1848: Married Woman’s Property Act is passed in New York. It is later used as a model for
other states, all of which pass their own versions by 1900. For the first time, a woman wasn’t
automatically liable for her husband’s debts; she could enter contracts on her own; she could