Women in the pre-Islamic era (1/2)
Before going into further detail on this high status, we begin with the following general introduction:
Firstly: Women in the pre-Islamic era:
It is important to begin looking at the status of women in the different human civilizations before Islam. This will make it easy to clearly understand that Islam raised the status of women and the gloomy situation they were in before Islam. As they said: "things come clear by their opposites."
1- Women in the view of the Romans:
With the Romans, the man had the last word in what happens in the family. He was the leader and in charge of religious, political and economic affairs. Rather, it's to him that all the family's affairs are returned. He does the buying and selling. While women were considered to be incompetent, they never had to do anything. Since the law was made for the men only, their constitution held that being female automatically makes one have an incompetency level similar to that of those young in age and the mentally challenged.
They were also known for practicing a type of marriage referred to as: "sovereignty through marriage", where the woman enters under the ownership of her husband. She would literally take the ruling of being his daughter. She would also loose all ties with her original family. Her condition was so bad that, it's the husband who's the judge, if the wife ever defied the law, and he might even order her execution. Under the condition that the husband passed away, the wife would be entrusted to her sons or brother in-law.
2- Women in the view of the Greeks
Women in Old Greece were fully deprived of their constitutional rights and never had anything to do with social life or money matters. Men regarded women as having no other function than to stay at home and give birth. Thus, they never received love and emotion from their husbands, who treated them like servants. So much so that, some of their thinkers said: "The name "woman" must be incarcerated inside the home, just like her body."
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